Japanese auto maker Suzuki Motor Corporation will invest ₹70,000 crore in India over the next five to six years, president Toshihiro Suzuki said at the Hansalpur plant in Gujarat, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi flagged off exports of Maruti Suzuki’s first electric vehicle, e-Vitara, to 100 countries and inaugurated lithium-ion battery cell production.
“Suzuki will invest over ₹70,000 crore in India, over the next 5 to 6 years,” Toshihiro Suzuki said.
Maruti Suzuki chairman R.C. Bhargava said the outlay aligns with plans to scale to 40 lakh vehicles a year. “The expansion of 4 million units capacity (annually), with all the supporting infrastructure and investment in R&D, and new technologies, all of that takes a lot of money,” he said.
Asked about the finalisation of the second plant to be set up in Gujarat, which was announced last year for an investment of ₹35,000 crore, Bhargava said, “I am hoping we will be answering that question more specifically after the GST Council meeting (on September 4) because after that everybody will be making an estimate of what the impact of the GST decisions are going to be on future growth.”
He, however, declined to comment on the implications of the proposed changes in GST slabs.
The group has already invested over ₹1 lakh crore in India, supporting more than 11 lakh direct jobs.
The e-Vitara will be built exclusively at Suzuki Motor Gujarat and, for now, sold only overseas; no domestic launch timeline has been set.
The first export batch will ship from Pipavav port to Europe, including the UK, Germany, Norway, France, Denmark, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Sweden, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Austria and Belgium.
Bhargava cited export commitments and costs for holding back an India launch.
Toshihiro Suzuki said the Gujarat complex, “will soon become one of the world’s largest automobile manufacturing hubs”, with a planned capacity of 10 lakh units.
He called the start of India’s first lithium-ion battery and cell production with electrode-level localisation, “a big salute to Atmanirbhar Bharat”, noting that only raw material and some semiconductor parts come from Japan.