Ashok Leyland may move its low cost vehicle production to Nissan's Chennai plant. This also comes on the back of Renault freezing its car manufacturing plans.
Ms Swati Khandelwal in an exclusive interview with CNBC-TV18 said that Nissan is likely to use its Chennai facility for LCV production. This Chennai facility is currently a 50-50 joint venture between Renault and Nissan, where Renault has frozen the investments indefinitely.
Ashok Leyland which is a joint venture partner with Nissan in a separate LCV project for the Indian market, is likely to come into Nissan’s Chennai facility and rollout LCV products from there. There is no confirmation whether Ashok Leyland will be picking up a stake in the 50-50 joint venture between Renault and Nissan at Chennai or they will be investing there or it could possibly be a contract manufacturing setup between Nissan and Ashok Leyland. But for sure Ashok Leyland will be rolling out its LCV products from Nissan’s Chennai facility. Both these companies have identified two LCV products for the Indian market. The first one will be LCV 200 Vanette and second will be people mover LVC which will come in eventually. Nissan’s senior management met up with almost 300 Indian suppliers on October 26 and discussed the plans and product plans going forward.
She said that the company did confirm the news and said that both companies will be using the available facilities in the first phase and the product development activities continue. However further announcements will be made in the future.
