Maruti Suzuki has crossed 10 lakh cumulative vehicle dispatches from the railway sidings built inside its own factories, and 7.9 lakh of those cars left from the Hansalpur plant in Gujarat. The Manesar siding in Haryana accounted for the remaining 2.1 lakh. Hansalpur started loading in March 2023, Manesar in June 2025, putting the million-vehicle mark at three years and five months, Deccan Chronicle reported.
What an in-plant siding does
Most Indian carmakers move finished vehicles to a railway terminal by road first, load them there, and pay for the handling twice. An in-plant siding removes that leg: the rake comes to the assembly line, the cars roll on, and the train leaves the factory gate. Maruti’s Hansalpur facility at Becharaji in Mandal taluka, Ahmedabad district, was India’s first automobile plant to get one.
The company’s own rail share tells the story of the shift. Rail carried 5 per cent of Maruti’s dispatches in FY 2014-15. It carried 26.5 per cent in FY 2025-26, and the target for FY 2030-31 is 35 per cent, DeshGujarat reported. Counting external loading terminals as well, Maruti says it has moved 33 lakh vehicles by rail since 2014-15.
Why the Gujarat share is the number to read
Hansalpur has produced cars since 2017, and Manesar has been a Maruti site far longer. The 79 per cent figure reflects the two-year head start Hansalpur had on the Manesar siding, but it also reflects geography. Cars built at Hansalpur have to reach buyers in the Gangetic plain, the east and the south, and every one of those journeys is long enough for rail to beat a car carrier on cost. A Manesar car serving the north has a shorter road option competing with it.
That makes Gujarat the place where Maruti’s logistics economics actually work, which matters for what gets built here next. The state has spent a decade arguing that its combination of a port, the Dedicated Freight Corridor and factory-adjacent rail is what should pull auto assembly west. Hansalpur is now the working example of the claim, not a projection in a policy document.
What it means for people in the region
The direct local effect is on the roads. A rake of car carriers takes several hundred truck trips off National Highway 47 and the Ahmedabad ring road each time it loads. Residents of Becharaji, Mandal and the villages along the plant road have lived with that carrier traffic since 2017, and every percentage point Maruti shifts to rail is traffic that does not pass their doorsteps.
The second effect is employment adjacency. An in-plant siding pulls the loading, inspection and rake-handling work inside the factory perimeter and into the supplier park around it, rather than leaving it at a distant goods shed. It also raises the cost to Maruti of ever moving assembly away from a site where it owns the rail link.
The third is a caution. A logistics milestone measures how cars leave, not how many get sold. Maruti’s rail share has risen partly because the company has been pushing volume through Hansalpur for export and domestic supply at the same time, and the dispatch figure will track production rather than any gain for the region on its own.
What to watch
Maruti has said a third in-plant siding is planned at its Kharkhoda plant in Haryana. Once that runs, Gujarat’s share of in-plant rail dispatches will fall even if Hansalpur’s absolute numbers keep rising, and the useful question becomes whether Hansalpur holds its volume or simply its percentage. Watch also for how much of the Hansalpur outflow goes to the Pipavav and Mundra export routes as against inland destinations, since that split decides whether Gujarat’s ports gain alongside its factories.
Sources: Deccan Chronicle, DeshGujarat, Autoguide India
This report was compiled and written with AI assistance from publicly reported sources, and reviewed for accuracy.