Maruti Suzuki India Limited announced on Wednesday that its Manesar in-plant railway siding has dispatched 100,000 vehicles since commencing operations in June 2025, a milestone the company reached within nine months of launch. The achievement marks a point in the company's broader effort to shift vehicle distribution away from road transport and toward rail.
The facility, spread across 46 acres inside Maruti Suzuki's Manesar plant in Haryana, is India's largest automobile in-plant railway siding. It has processed dispatches across more than 500 rakes and currently services 380 cities through 17 distribution hubs using a dedicated hub-and-spoke model. Models dispatched through the siding include the Alto, WagonR, Brezza, Dzire, Ertiga, Celerio, XL6, Eeco, and Super Carry — vehicles manufactured at the company's Gurugram and Manesar facilities.
Managing Director and CEO Hisashi Takeuchi noted that the siding has the capacity to handle 450,000 units annually at full operation. He said the company dispatched over 585,000 vehicles by rail across all its facilities in 2025, a record for the company, and that it aims to increase rail's share of outbound logistics from the current 26% to 35% by FY 2030-31. That target represents a significant shift from a decade ago, when rail accounted for just 5% of the company's outbound vehicle movement in 2016.
The Manesar siding is Maruti Suzuki's second PM GatiShakti in-plant terminal, following a similar facility it operates in Gujarat. It was inaugurated in June 2025 by Union Minister for Railways Ashwini Vaishnaw and Haryana Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini. The PM GatiShakti National Master Plan, under which the siding is registered, is a central government initiative aimed at improving multimodal connectivity and logistics infrastructure across the country.
The facility was developed as part of the 126-kilometre Haryana Orbital Rail Corridor, a dedicated freight rail project running from Sonipat to Palwal in Haryana. The corridor is being executed by a joint venture company, Haryana Orbital Rail Corporation Ltd. Maruti Suzuki has committed INR 325 crore toward developing the corridor and has invested an additional INR 127 crore in internal yard development, bringing its total investment in the project to approximately INR 452 crore.
In terms of infrastructure, the siding features a fully electrified corridor with four full-length tracks for rakes and one track for engine escape. It also includes a two-floor station building, a dedicated pathway for guards and drivers along the tracks, and an advanced electronic train interlocking system.
Maruti Suzuki has a longer history with rail-based logistics than most of its peers in the domestic automobile industry. The company became the first automaker in India to obtain an Automobile-Freight-Train-Operator licence, receiving it in 2013. Since FY 2014-15, it has cumulatively transported over 29.50 lakh vehicles by rail across its operations.
The company calculates its emissions avoidance figures using the Global Logistics Emissions Council framework, version 3.1, a methodology developed by the Smart Freight Centre, an international non-profit organisation that provides a standardised approach for measuring and reporting logistics-related emissions. Maruti Suzuki says it refined its calculations in 2025 to better align with the framework's methodology.
The company has framed its rail logistics push as part of its commitments under the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal No. 13 on climate action, which calls for measures to combat climate change and its impacts. Reducing dependence on road transport for vehicle dispatch is also expected to contribute to easing highway congestion, particularly on freight-heavy corridors in northern India where the company's manufacturing operations are concentrated.