JOIN USIt was one of the most talked about projects and touted as the prized possession of the Modi government, but lack of demand has seen a drastic fall in its production and decisions are being reworked for the Tata Nano plant in Gujarat to continue functioning in the state. The car manufacturers are now contemplating to manufacture other models at its plant in Sanand.
Tata Motors has produced only 4,000 nano cars this October, a figure that might not be very encouraging for the company that shifted base from West Bengal to Gujarat amidst a political slugfest.
Officials at the factory pointed out that in the first seven months, there was a three-fold drop in sales of Nano. As per statistics between April and October, the number of Nano cars sold across the country was just 12,322 and only 76 of them were exported.
According to the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM), these figures put together is over three times less than the number of cars sold (43,627 units) during the same period in 2012.
The dropping sales figures are only adding to the woes of the car manufacturers. During 2011-12, about 74,527 Nano cars were sold. This dipped by 28 per cent in 2012-13, when just 53,848 of these cars were sold. “These sales figures are nowhere near the annual production capacity of the Nano plant at Sanand that can produce about 2.5 lakh units a year,” said an industry expert.
The company had also planned to increase the capacity of the plant to 5 lakh units per annum in the second phase.
Since its commercial launch in March 2009, the number of Nano cars sold till October 2013 within a span of four-and-a-half-years is over 2.41 lakh units. Industry experts however point out that it was not just Tata, but other car manufacturers were also bearing the brunt of the ongoing slowdown.