Tata Motors,the giant auto maker announced that it will seek a way for Nano’s fresh capacity.This plan by Tata Motors is to run the Sanand plant in Gujarat at full capacity within few months.At the Sanand plant,the company for a month produces about 12,000 units and the manufacturing capacity of this plant is 2.5 lakh units per year.
The Vice-President of Tata Motors,R.Ramakrishnan informed,”The Nano sales have been very good. Last month, we sold over 8,700 units and within a few months time we will be running the full capacity of 20,000 units per month at the Sanand plant.Where we would add the fresh capacity will be decided in due course of time, but the advantage that we have is the flexible production capability for Nano that we have”.
He said,”When we started, around 80 per cent of Nano customers were buying it as a second car and 20 per cent were first-time buyers. Now the ratio is about 50:50 and ultimately, we are looking at 80 per cent first time buyers purchasing the car, which is what we had aimed when we started off”.
He added,the company is receiving over 1,10,000 enquiries about the Nano a month from across India and the company expects an increase in the number of first-time car buyers actually purchasing the Nano.The company expects the sales of its Indica hatchback to pick up after suffering a slump last year due to the non-availability of Bharat Stage-IV compliant version.Now that we have the Indica eV2, which is BS-IV compliant, we expect to make up for the loss we had last year, as most of the sales are in the cities where the BS-IV norm is followed.
Tata Motors sold about 8,707 units of the Nano in March whereas 85 per cent more than this rate in the same month last year.