Renault India has told the Times of India that it will work closely with alliance partner Nissan to roll out cross badged vehicles, but with differentiated design.
However it is the 4×4 Duster, from Romanian unit Dacia that is the big success in India accounting for 5,146 of Renault’s 6,300 sales in India in May – and this compares to just 482 sales in the same month a year ago.
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Renault also sells the Pulse and Scala, product twins of Nissan’s Micra and Sunny. Carlos Tavares, Renault’s chief operating officer, said: “We should continue to enhance commonality while cross badging of vehicles should be more differentiated in design of the car.
“We should use common power trains platforms but, on the parts which can be seen, we need to differentiate better.”
Tavares also said Renault will continue with its core model strategy. “The Indian market is extremely competitive and therefore doing too many cars is a waste of focus and energy. Instead we should strive to improve our communication about our vehicles with our customers better.” he said.
Renault, he said will not rest with Duster’s success. “Let’s enjoy the fact that we have improved our market share by 2% in one year. Soon we will be making some money but what next, how to prepare for a sustainable and a reasonable growth going ahead? We don’t have to increase our market share by 2% every year but we have to be realistic.”
Tavares also said there is “room for improvement” at the plant in Chennai that Renault shares with Nissan.
“We are making sure that we deliver quality products for our customers with an organisation which is very lean. But the way we are achieving is not very lean, it is not very frugal, so we have huge room for improvement in the plant, in terms of making it more efficient.”
