The commercial vehicle segment globally sees a cyclic demand from customers, for India, this generally follows a four-to-five-year replacement cycle. This means that the Indian CV industry is likely to witness a pick-up in demand over the next couple of years. In addition, the push from the e-commerce segment, and the growing need for last-mile delivery there is a huge growth impetus for the Small Commercial Vehicle (SCV) segment in India.
This is exactly an area, where Japanese auto major Nissan Motor Corporation could look to enter the Indian CV segment, in the future.
In a conversation with Express Mobility, Ashwani Gupta, COO, Nissan Motor Corporation shared that “We at Nissan have already decided to downsize our light commercial vehicle (LCV) portfolio. In the LCV portfolio, we have vans in the European market and are dependent on Renault to give us the same. In Japan, we have a couple of brands but in LCVs we are focusing more on the pickup truck segment.”
“I don’t think today we are ready to bring pickup trucks to India, but in Japan, we decided to make the last-mile delivery electric vans based on the K platform with Mitsubishi. But if after the 6 new products under Renault-Nissan’s India focus, or the three products of Nissan we are confident in that (LCV) segment which is like 20-22 percent of the total India market I think we have an opportunity over there but that’s not our first priority. Today our first priority is SUVs and A-segment EVS,” he added.
This means, if things go as planned, the Indian SCV market still could attract established players like Nissan to take the plunge.
