Maruti Suzuki Dispatched 1 Million Vehicles Through In-Plant Rail Sidings

Maruti Suzuki India’s in-plant railway sidings at Hansalpur in Gujarat and Manesar in Haryana have together dispatched 1 million vehicles cumulatively, a milestone the country's largest carmaker said it reached in three years and five months. The Gujarat siding began operations in March 2023, followed by Manesar in June 2025.

According to the company, the Hansalpur facility accounted for roughly 7.9 lakh of the dispatches and Manesar for about 2.1 lakh. Maruti Suzuki has previously said it is the only passenger vehicle manufacturer in India to operate in-plant railway sidings — facilities built inside the factory premises that allow finished vehicles to be loaded directly onto trains, bypassing road transport to the nearest railway station.

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Both sidings were developed under the PM GatiShakti National Master Plan, the Centre's multi-modal infrastructure programme, and the Manesar facility also draws on the upcoming Haryana Orbital Rail Corridor. Maruti Suzuki said rail-based dispatches from the two plants had crossed 3 lakh vehicles in the current financial year to 31 August, and accounted for 70 per cent of its total rail dispatches over that period.

Speaking on the milestone, Hisashi Takeuchi, Managing Director and CEO of Maruti Suzuki India, said it marked "a landmark achievement" in the company's green logistics push, and credited the sidings for showing how integrated infrastructure could deliver both operational and environmental gains. He added that the company's share of rail-based dispatches has grown from 5 per cent in FY2014-15 to 26.5 per cent in FY2025-26, and that Maruti Suzuki was targeting 35 per cent by FY2030-31, with a further in-plant siding planned at its upcoming Kharkhoda facility.

The push towards rail comes as India's passenger vehicle industry faces growing scrutiny over logistics-related emissions and rising outbound freight costs, particularly for a manufacturer despatching vehicles nationwide from a small number of plants. Shifting dispatches from road to rail is widely seen in the industry as one of the more cost-effective levers for cutting fleet-level carbon output, since it does not require changes to vehicle technology itself. Maruti Suzuki's overall push into rail has been building for over a decade: the company said it had cumulatively moved more than 3.3 million vehicles by rail since FY2014-15, using both loading terminals outside its plants and, more recently, the in-plant sidings.

Maruti Suzuki did not disclose the capital cost of the two sidings, though the Manesar facility, spread across 46 acres, has a stated annual dispatch capacity of 4.5 lakh vehicles. The company's Kharkhoda plant near Gurugram, currently ramping up production, is expected to eventually house a similar in-plant rail link as Maruti Suzuki works towards its FY2030-31 target — a goal that will depend heavily on continued expansion of dedicated freight and passenger rail capacity across the routes its vehicles travel.