Rahul Bharti on how Maruti Suzuki is promoting sustainable practices

India’s first automobile in-plant railway siding project (of Maruti Suzuki) was inaugurated by PM Modi in Gujarat on March 12. The project is at Hansalpur in Gujarat’s Mehsana district. Under the project, Maruti will increase the use of railways for dispatching finished cars from 26% to 40% annually, saving 50,000 truck trips, 35 million litres of fuel, and cutting down on 1,650 tonnes of carbon emissions per year. This move will contribute to reducing the company’s carbon footprint and promoting sustainable practices in the automobile industry, a company spokesperson said.

Rahul Bharti, ED, Maruti Suzuki, in conversation with ET Now.

What will the in-plant railway siding project mean for Maruti Suzuki and the auto industry?Rahul Bharti: One rake can replace 40 trucks and each truck has an average trip of about 1600 kilometres. So, if you run one train, one rake, you are replacing 64,000 kilometres of truck movement on the road. So, one, road congestion comes down. Two, all the oil that it burns in the truck, the fossil fuel, comes down and three, the CO2 emission falls. By doing this project, we will save 50,000 truck trips every year. We will save through those truck trips about 35 million litres of fossil fuel burning and by avoiding that burning, we will save 1650 metric tonnes of CO2 emission per year.And you are going to start it in your Manesar plant and other plants across the country as well?Rahul Bharti: That is right. After Gujarat, the work on the Manesar railway siding is already in process and after that we would be targeting our Kharkhoda plant also and that is the way when we move from two million to four million production, I think this is capacity for logistics and the modern way.