Renault Nissan Automotive India Pvt Ltd (RNAIPL), the globally unique dedicated manufacturing facility for the Renault Nissan Alliance, has manufactured over 4.5 million (45 lakhs) powertrain units at its facility in Oragadam, Chennai (India). This includes 2.83 million engines and 1.67 million gearboxes since the start of production in 2010.
RNAIPL produces Renault and Nissan cars for India and export markets with over 2.75 million cars produced since start of operations in 2010. The state-of-the-art manufacturing facility also includes end to end capabilities for production of engines from melting of aluminium ingots, casting the molten metal into various engine parts such as the cylinder head and cylinder block at the casting shop, machining them to the perfect size and dimensions at the Machining shop and assembling them together at the Assembly shop.
The plant has the capacity to produce engines with ranges from 800cc to 1500cc. RNAIPL also houses all facilities required for manufacturing gearboxes including gear machining, shaft machining, clutch house machining and gear heat treatment. Since start of production in May 2010, RNAIPL has produced seven different types of engines and three varieties of gearboxes.
RNAIPL’s Powertrain reached the production milestone of one million engines in 2016, within six years of start of production and has also produced more than 160,000 units of EV reducer components for exports. “The production of 4.5 million powertrain units is a very important milestone for RNAIPL. In addition to powering the cars produced at our Chennai plant, we have also exported powertrain units and components to other countries around the world.
Looking to the future, as part of the USD 600 million investment announced by the Renault Nissan alliance, we are readying our infrastructure to produce the engines and gearboxes for our new models,” said Keerthi Prakash, Managing Director, RNAIPL. One of the top variant engines that is currently produced by RNAIPL is the HR10 TURBO engine that features the unique mirror bore cylinder coating technology used in world-class sports cars such as the Nissan GT-R.
The technology reduces resistance inside the engine, cutting weight, improving heat management and combustion to deliver smooth acceleration and efficient fuel use. RNAIPL’s powertrain division places the utmost importance on the quality of each unit produced.
The plant uses robotic vision camera technology to ensure complete quality confirmation during the production of powertrain units and the sequential process flow ensures that each unit does not proceed to the next stage in manufacturing until it has been confirmed and certified for its quality.