New Delhi: Tata Motor’s production of its small car Nano came down to naught in 2019. Worse, it could sale only one car during the year that passed.
According to a regulatory filing by the company, Tata Motors had zero production during the year 2019. It could sale one only unit in February during the whole year.
Tata Motor is yet to withdraw from production of ‘People’s car’ conceived by Ratan Tata.
Tata Motors has so far been maintaining that no decision has been made yet on the future of the Nano saying production planning of a car is a “conscious management of demand, system inventory and planned efficiencies”.
It has, however, admitted that in its current form the Nano will not meet the new safety regulations and BS-VI emission norms.
Tata Motors had unveiled Nano in January 2008 at the Auto Expo with much expectations of being “the people’s car”, as dubbed by the then Tata group chief Ratan Tata. However, it could not live up to the billing with sales dwindling over the years.
Company officials had, however, hinted that production and sales of the Nano would stop from April 2020 as Tata Motors has no plans to invest further on the model to meet strict emission norms under Bharat Stage-VI, which come into effect from April 1 this year and other safety regulations.
The Nano was launched in the market in March 2009 with an initial price of close to Rs 1 lakh for the basic model despite cost escalations, with Tata insisting that “a promise is a promise”.
However, from the beginning, Nano courted trouble. It was originally planned to be rolled out from Tata Motors’ proposed plant at Singur in West Bengal, where it faced intense political and farmer protests against land acquisition. The company had to shift its production to a new plant at Sanand in Gujarat.
