Suzuki Motor Corporation Deputy Director and President Toshihiro Suzuki said that Suzuki’s future mission is to achieve carbon neutrality with small cars.
Suzuki Motor Corporation Deputy Director and President Toshihiro Suzuki said that Suzuki’s future mission is to achieve carbon neutrality with small cars.
Japanese automaker Suzuki Motor Corporation announced on Sunday that it will make around 150 billion yen (approx.
Also read:Japan is investing $42 billion in India over five years
The company has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the government of Gujarat.
It was signed “on March 19, 2022 at the India-Japan Economic Forum in New Delhi, India, in the presence of Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi,” Suzuki Motor Corporation said in a statement.
Toshihiro Suzuki, Representative Director and President of Suzuki Motor Corporation (SMC), said at the forum, “Suzuki’s future mission is to achieve carbon neutrality in small cars. We will continue to actively invest in India to realize a Self-Contained India (Atma-nirbhar Bharat).”
According to the MoU, the company’s wholly-owned arm, Suzuki Motor Gujarat Pvt Ltd (SMG), will invest £7,300 million by 2026 to build a BEV battery factory on land adjacent to SMG’s existing factory.
SMG will also invest a further £3,100 million in increasing production capacity for BEV manufacturing by 2025, the statement said.
Currently, the Suzuki Group has a cumulative production capacity of about 22 lakh units per year for manufacturing conventional internal combustion engine vehicles at two plants of its main subsidiary Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) in Haryana, together with the plant of SMG in Gujarat.
MSI’s production capacity at the Gurgaon and Manesar plants in Haryana is around 15,000 units per year.
SMG, which exclusively supplies vehicles to MSI, has an additional installed production capacity of 7.5 lakh units per year.
In the statement, SMC further said that another group company, Maruti Suzuki Toyotsu India Pvt Ltd (MSTI), will make a £45 million investment in building a vehicle recycling plant by 2025.
Last November, MSTI – the joint venture between Maruti Suzuki and Toyota Tsusho Group – started operations at the Noida vehicle dismantling and recycling facility in Uttar Pradesh. The facility covers 10,993 square meters and has the capacity to scrap and recycle over 24,000 end-of-life vehicles (ELVs) annually.
In November 2019, the two partners announced a joint venture to set up vehicle scrapping and recycling.
SMC’s Indian arm, Maruti Suzuki, plans to enter the electric vehicle segment by 2025. The company, a leader in the mass-market segment, has claimed that at current prices, it would be difficult to sell affordable electric vehicles at scale.
Maruti Suzuki had tested an electric vehicle based on its WagonR in early 2019 with plans for a 2020 launch, but decided against a commercial launch for personal use due to a lack of infrastructure and government support.
On Saturday, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced an investment target of five trillion yen (₹3.20,000 crore) in India over the next five years, as the two sides struck a series of agreements and collaborations to further their distinct strategic and global focus expand partnership.
The two countries also announced a Clean Energy Partnership (CEP) for cooperation in areas such as electric vehicles, storage systems including batteries, charging infrastructure for electric vehicles, solar energy development; hydrogen and ammonia.
“The aim is to promote manufacturing in India, create resilient and trustworthy supply chains in these areas and encourage collaboration in research and development. This will be implemented through the existing mechanism of energy dialogue,” read a joint statement.
