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French carmaker Renault on Wednesday said it aims to double its sales in India from the current one lakh units. It also plans to phase out diesel cars from next year, similar to market leader Maruti Suzuki.
“India is a key market for Groupe Renault. We are still young in India, yet our ambitions are high in line with our ‘Drive the Future’ strategic plan. We aim at doubling our sales by 2022,” Groupe Renault CEO Thierry Bollore told reporters here on the sidelines of an event to unveil compact multi-purpose vehicle (MPV) Triber.
On discontinuing diesel engines, he said, “I think this is the strategy we are going to follow. The reality is that we already had very flexible lines. In the past, we have already had our diesel lines manufacture gasoline engines and we can push hard to make sure that it could be 100 per cent (petrol). We did not have to change our production lines — we just had to adapt them.”
The seven-seater Triber will come only in a petrol version.
As BS-VI norms kick off in India in April 2020, the company will ‘limit’ the production of diesel engines, similar to what is happening in Europe with the introduction of Euro-VII norms.
As regulations change drastically, the company cannot afford not to have alternatives, said Bollore.
Collaborative project
The Triber is the outcome of a joint project between the Renault teams in India and France and is the world’s first vehicle specifically designed for the Indian market, the company said.
The sub-4-metre MPV has been conceived, developed and produced in India, for Indian customers first, before it is taken to the world, Bollore said.
On electric vehicles, he said India will not be left behind in Renault’s global plans. The company globally plans to introduce eight new electric cars by 2022.
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