Indian Railways has increasingly become the preferred option for auto manufacturers, and Maruti Suzuki has taken a lead by transporting 7.2 lakh units across country in the last 5 years.
Transporting was often taken up by trucks, Railways has increasingly grown to become cheaper and viable option, Maruti Suzuki stated that it has been able to reduce 3,200 MT of Carbon-di-oxide emissions while transporting trough Indian Railways, and has saved 1,00,000 truck trips since then.
Maruti Suzuki has transported 1.8 lakh units in the last year alone, 13 per cent of all its sales
“The transportation of finished vehicles via railways has many tangible benefits. It is a clean, environment friendly mode of transportation,” explained Kenichi Ayukawa, MD and CEO at Maruti Suzuki India. “As a conscious effort at Maruti Suzuki, we have taken important steps to enhance vehicle transportation via railways.”
Indian Railways has been pushing for auto makers to adopt Indian Railways for transportation, its design wing RDSO (Research Design and Standard’s Organisation) has come up with new design ‘twin deck rake’ which doubled car carrying capacity from 125 to 265, and RDSO is further enhancing design to increase rakes capacity to 318 cars and will be operated at 95km per hour, highest for any goods carrying trains in India.
Maruti Suzuki is first of auto manufacturers to receive AFTO (Automobile Freight Train Operator) license, which allows manufacturer to operate and fabricate high speed autowagon rakes on railway networks.
Maruti Suzuki uses five loading terminals in Gurugram, Farukhnagar, Kathuwas, Patli and Detroj, and 15 destination terminals across country, other manufacturers likes of Mahindra 7 Mahindra, and Kia also use rail services to transport manufactured cars.