In 7 yrs, 1 in 3 Maruti cars to ride trains to reach customers

KOLKATA: In seven years, Maruti Suzuki India Ltd (MSIL) plans to dispatch nearly 14 lakh new vehicles per year on freight trains. This will account for nearly 35% of its projected 4 million capacity by then. In 2023-24, it dispatched 21.5% of its production or around 4.5 lakh cars on freight trains.
MSIL has become the first Indian automaker to ship 2 million vehicles using railways.In the past 10 years, its rail dispatches have gone up from 65,700 units in 2014-15 to 4,44,750 units in 2023-24.
MSIL managing director and CEO Hisashi Takeuchi said with the production capacity nearly doubling from about 2 million units to 4 million units by 2030-31, MSIL plans to augment the use of railways in dispatching close to 35% of vehicles over the next 7-8 years. "We stand committed to the Government of India’s Net zero emissions target by 2070,” he said.
MSIL, which was the first company in India to obtain the Automobile Freight Train Operator licence dispatches vehicles to 20 destinations using Indian railways that serves 450 cities across the country. Use of freight trains has led to cumulative reduction of over 10,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions and over 270 million litre of cumulative fuel savings.
Earlier in the year, MSIL inaugurated India’s first automobile in-plant railway siding at Maruti Suzuki’s Gujarat facility with a capacity to dispatch over 300,000 vehicles per annum. The next in-plant railway siding is in progress at Manesar facility and will be operational soon.
Rail dispatches