Ashok Leyland may look to supply engines of up to three litre capacity for car models coming out of Franco-Japanese Renault-Nissan's plant near Chennai.

The commercial vehicle maker, which plans to launch its first passenger vehicle in a year, operates three joint ventures with Nissan (for car manufacturing, engines and a third for R&D). The first product from this tie-up, the 1.2 tonne Dost LCV, was launched recently, while two more platforms (for an MPV and for a six-tonne truck and bus) are on the way.

“We're open to supplying engines to them if required – it's an interesting proposition. Right now, however, we will concentrate on meeting our own requirement. We are developing a three-litre diesel engine for the larger trucks. We have capability to make engines from 1.5 to around 3 litre capacities,” Dr V Sumantran, Executive Vice-Chairman, Hinduja Automotive and Chairman of Nissan Ashok Leyland Powertrain told Business Line .

Nissan itself has a 4 lakh annual capacity plant at Oragadam (Tamil Nadu) shared with global alliance partner Renault, where it currently manufactures the Micra small car and Sunny sedan and assembles the premium Teana sedan. While this facility currently includes an engine plant that makes only small capacity engines, the alliance is also building a second such plant for bigger engines.

Electric Dost

Ashok Leyland is also developing an electric variant of the Dost (with technology help from Nissan), which may be unveiled within a year.

“We're working on an electric Dost, the eDost. This is being developed in partnership with Nissan and should be showcased within the next 12 months. At the auto expo (in 2010) we also showed the world's first plug-in series hybrid bus and that received very good reviews. We're developing that further as well,” he said.

This follows competitors Tata Motors and Mahindra & Mahindra, which are also working on electric versions of their LCVs — Ace and Maxximo, respectively.

> roudra.b@thehindu.co.in

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