Its a fact that Tata Nano, which was perceived to be an infrastructure-challenging project prior to its launch, has not done even close to what was expected. Buyers have just not shown interest in the car and there have been various reasons for that.
Ratan Tata’s dream project ‘Nano’ is being worked upon with new features to lend it a ‘Smart’ City car image, away from the cheap car image it was promoted as, earlier. Tata has bettered its quality, has given it a power steering and we will soon see AMT (Automated Manual Transmission) on the car.
However, despite all this, sales have just not been picking up. Just for reference, Tata has a production capacity of 20,000 cars per month for Nano and has a dedicated plant at Sanand, Gujarat. Just to give you a perspective, according to the official SIAM data we have, its cumulative sales from April to December 2014 stood at a paltry 11,333 units which averages to only about 1260 cars per month.
It seems the company is running out of perseverance in this project and according to Zee News, Tata’s chairman Cyrus Mistry has given an ultimatum to the company to ensure Nano project moves. Reportedly, Cysurs Mistry has allotted two years to Tata Motors and if Nano’s sales do not see a sizable jump within this time frame, he may be forced to shut the Nano project completely.
We are not sure if Nano will be able to rise from the ashes but the upcoming automatic (AMT) version we feel may do the trick for the company, if priced well…
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