Nissan Motor India Private Limited(NMIPL), a 100 per cent subsidiary of Nissan Motor, Japan is all set to launch its compact car Micra in May 2010 . It plans to line up nine models in India by 2012 starting with its sports car C702 to be launched here come January. In a candid chat with Sohini Das, Kiminobu Tokuyama, managing director and chief executive officer of NMIPL talks about the company's plans to develop India as a global manufacturing and sourcing hub.
How do you want to position the new global compact car, Micra, for the Indian market. Do you plan to utilise the platform for developing other cars as well?
We are looking at positioning it in B+ segment that has cars like the Maruti Suzuki Swift and Hyundai i-10. We are planning to have three cars based on this newly developed V-platform. The first model on this platform would be a hatchback out of our Chennai plant where production would start from May 2010, and in the second year we plan to roll out a sedan, and the third could be a compact multi-purpose vehicle.
What are the export plans for this 'global compact car' ?
We will start exporting the car from our Chennai plant from end-2010 and plan to export around 110,000 units in one year from then. Gradually, exports would be scaled up to 180,000 units to over 100 countries in Europe, Africa, West Asia among others. The manufacturing unit will initially have the capacity to produce 2,00,000 cars per annum that would be later scaled up to 4,00,000 units. The Chennai plant would be used as a global export hub for the Micra. Production cost is an important factor in the production of the Micra. Other global manufacturers have found that India is very good quality and cost competitive. The India plant would produce the first two models on the V-platform, and we are yet to decide on the third model. V-platform vehicles would be produced in Thailand, China, Mexico apart from India. We plan to produce one million cars globally per year.
What percentage of this global car would be localised content? What about your plans to source components from China?
The local content in this car is around 85 per cent. Yes, a small proportion would be Chinese components as well that will include the headlamp and engine control unit. Some components for the diesel engine and manual transmission could be imported from Europe. It will basically be an interchange of parts from different regions as we are looking at developing five global manufacturing hubs across the world. We would draw from resources from each of these regions.
Do you have any plans to export components from India apart from the CBU of the Micra?
Yes, we do plan to export production parts worth $20 million in 2010-11 from India and are looking at taking that figure up to $40 million by 2012.
How bullish are you on the compact car platform both globally and in India. What kind of a market share are you looking at?
The compact car industry represents roughly 20 per cent of the global TIV (total industry volume) and in an industry of 60 million cars per year that represents around 12 million units. Nissan's presence in this segment has been very shy as we did not have specific platform for it. We now plan to increase our market and segment presence globally from a current 80 per cent to 94 per cent in 2012 on the back of the new V-platform and light commercial vehicles. As for India, we are bullish on the compact car segment and target to garner an overall market share across segments of 5.5 per cent by 2012. Since Nissan began selling cars in India in 2004, it has only sold about 1,000 X-Trail vehicles, and around 300 Teana sedans. We currently sell imported CBUs (completely built units) that draw a duty of over 100 per cent. We plan to line up nine models in all for India in the coming years, of this five would be manufactured here while four would be imported from Japan.