MARUTI, KIA TO HYUNDAI – WHY AUTOMAKERS ARE TURNING TO TRAINS TO TRANSPORT CARS

If you drive on expressways and highways frequently, one common sight is long box-shaped trucks, often with a car company logo on the side. Of course, these are car transporters, doing what the name suggests – transporting automobiles from factories to yards in various parts of the country. But I have to admit that these days, I see fewer and fewer of them on the roads.

Not because car sales are slipping, but because more and more cars are being transported via trains. A few days ago, the country’s largest carmaker, Maruti-Suzuki, opened a massive railway siding inside its Manesar factory, which will transport vehicles from this plant to the rest of India. This 46-acre siding connects the Manesar factory to the Delhi-Mumbai main line and, crucially, the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor. The company spent Rs 127 crore specifically on the development of this yard.

This line is part of the first phase of the Haryana Orbital Rail Corridor (HORC), which will connect Palwal to Sonipat via Manesar while bypassing the capital. And Maruti-Suzuki will have a 13 per cent stake in this with an estimated investment of Rs 325 crore in the orbital corridor. The plan isn’t just to move 4.5 lakh vehicles annually – manufactured at the Gurugram and Manesar plants – to over 17 major railway hubs and the Pipavav and Mundra ports. It is also to eventually connect Maruti’s new plant at Kharkhoda to the line, which should be opened in the next four to five years.

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Car transport via trains

Maruti-Suzuki has been using the railways to transport cars since 2014-15, sending over 2.5 million vehicles via trains. Hisashi Takeuchi, Managing Director, Maruti-Suzuki, said that the company aims to transport over 35 per cent of its cars through rail by 2030-31. This would not only reduce road congestion but would play a major role in reducing carbon emissions, he stressed.

Maruti-Suzuki isn’t the only one capitalising on the speed and reliability of railways. As the country’s largest carmaker actively invests in HORC, others are innovating too. Kia India, which uses a railway siding a few kilometres from its plant in Andhra Pradesh’s Anantapur, launched a double-decker freight train that can easily transport its tall SUVs. As the company’s March press release stated, each train can carry 264 vehicles – “more than two-and-a-half times the capacity of a standard train, which typically carries 100 cars.”

But it is Hyundai India that seems to be the most enthusiastic about rail transportation. The automaker transported 1,56,724 vehicles by railways in 2024, which was 26 per cent of its domestic wholesale volume.

Hyundai’s Tarun Garg had earlier mentioned that the Indian Railways is also profiting from this boom in rail logistics. The Pune division of the railways recorded a 143 per cent gain in revenues from automobile transportation, after ferrying cars manufactured by Mahindra, Skoda-Volkswagen, and Tata Motors in the Chakan area.

Overall, railway officials estimate that 20 per cent of the cars manufactured in India travel much of their journey to new owners on steel wheels. A Business Standard report said that the number of rakes used for automobile transport increased by nine per cent in the financial year 2024-25. This led to a five per cent increase in freight revenue, to Rs 973 crore.

It’s ironic that automobile companies are going to the railways, ostensibly for reducing carbon emissions, because at the end of the day, cars are not what one would describe as environmentally friendly. However, increased rail usage is a good thing in terms of decongesting the roads. And, thanks to intensive electrification, sending automobiles via rakes is turning out to be more efficient and cost-effective.

Kushan Mitra is an automotive journalist based in New Delhi. He tweets @kushanmitra. Views are personal.

(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)

2025-06-22T09:10:27Z