Leyland-Nissan rolls out light truck

The Ashok Leyland-Nissan joint venture unveiled Dost, its first 1.25-tonne light commercial pick-up vehicle.

V Sumantran, chairman, Nissan Ashok Leyland Powertain, said, “This is a new chapter for Ashok Leyland, which has not been present in this segment so far.”

The LCV segment in India notches up sales of about 280,000 units annually and is growing at roughly 25% per year.

Leyland sees huge growth potential here. “We are entering a high volume segment with product offerings on three platforms. It will be a whole new scale of operations,” said Sumantran.

Dost has been developed with almost 100% local content, with Nissan providing only the body and vehicle design, although it has been a 50-50 partnership in investment.

Since acquiring the land for a greenfield unit for the joint venture at Pillaipakkam was delayed, Dost was produced from the Leyland’s Hosur plant and this helped the venture to almost halve its expenditure from the originally earmarked investment of `2,300 crore, said Sumantran.

The Pillaipakkam land has now been acquired from the government, and a dedicated facility to service the venture will be ready by the time Nissan Ashok Leyland Powertain is ready to roll out its next product in 2013.

In an earlier interview with DNA, the company had suggested that this could be a mini-bus for commercial application. Meanwhile, the second product from the JV will be a Nissan marque to be manufactured at Nissan’s Oragadam plant and launched in 2012.

With three platforms to service the sub-3.5 tonne category, the company is more than ready to enter a market that will outsell the rest by a large margin, said Sumantran. “The Indian customer is evolving towards this product, between the ACE at one end and heavier trucks at the other end. The sub-one tonne market is overcrowded,” he said. For Phase I, the company is looking at a capacity of 150,000 vehicles.