Curtains are likely to come down on the Nano car in a little over a year, as Tata Motors said on Thursday that it would not be upgrading the car from April 2020, when new emission norms come into effect. For the past several months, Nano was being produced only on demand.
“Nano is produced at our Sanand plant (Gujarat)...in January new safety norms came, in April some more new norms will come. In October new safety norms will come and BS-VI is going to happen from April 1 of 2020. So all products may not meet (BS-VI norms) and we may not invest in upgrading these products...and Nano is one of them,” Mayank Pareek, president of passenger vehicle business unit of Tata Motors, said.
In Ahmedabad, Vivek Srivatsa, head of marketing of passenger vehicle business unit, told reporters on the sidelines of the Harrier launch, “Demand for Nano is not so much, and we are producing it as per demand. It is difficult to fulfil new safety and fuel-related norms, and so we are not going to upgrade it.”
The Nano was the brainchild of Ratan Tata, who envisaged giving a safer and affordable alternative to families riding on two-wheelers.
It was launched in 2009 with an initial price of Rs1 lakh.
However, the car faced problems since the beginning. It was originally planned to be made from the company's plant in Singur in West Bengal, but intense protests against land acquisition forced Tata to look for another location for the plant, and it set up the plant at Sanand in Ahmedabad.
Though initial sales were promising, the interest died down. Ratan Tata later admitted that promoting Nano as 'the cheapest' car was a mistake.
For the past many months, the company was producing the car only against orders, giving a strong indication that the product would be phased out soon.
(With agency input)
