India performed yet another space feat on Wednesday when the Indian Space Research Organisation launched a record 104 satellites into orbit from Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh, something no other country has done before.
Tata Motors is developing higher capacity engines for its Nano car, to target domestic as well as foreign markets.
Tata's small car might just have managed to steal the thunder from the annual boat racing festival in Kerala. For a special offer for Onam, Keralites have decided to give oars a rest, and test-drive the Nano instead.
The company has been in discussions with vendors who are moving from Singur to Sanand to support them with mutually acceptable terms, which will be implemented.
Vyarawalla was upset to learn that the company has already delivered 16 cars in the city yesterday, beginning with customers in Mumbai, followed by Ahmedabad and Vadodara and her name did not figure in this list.
India's first woman photographer Homi Vyarawalla, who has been eagerly awaiting the delivery of Nano has threatened to cancel the booking if the car is not delivered to her within a week. The company had offered to deliver her the 'small car' on priority basis after accepting deposits from her about two months ago.
"All Indian cities are already struggling with traffic flow problem due to various types of vehicles on the road, lack of need-based road and traffic design and engineering and the unchecked growth of private vehicles and with the entry of the new cheap car Nano on the road, the situation is likely to get worsen," Justice Kailash Gambir said.
The Tatas are planning to introduce its small car Nano in Latin America in partnership with Italian auto maker Fiat.
Initially, there were concerns that the rudimentary nature of the Nano, priced at about 1,400 pounds, might fall short of stringent European safety standards, but these have diminished following its impressive performance at the Motor Industry Research Association last week.
Tata Motors will distribute all Nano cars from Pantnagar through its new subsidiary, Tata Motors Distribution
Five years after his promise to build a people's car, Ratan Tata will hand over the key of his dream project--the Nano- to its first customer on Friday.
Tata Motors' Pantnagar facility sent its first consignment of the world's cheapest car, Nano to Hyderabad.
Many vendors who had lost their investment in Singur, West Bengal, after being forced to abort production there, are yet to decide on relocating to Sanand. Most of these suppliers will address the demand for components from their existing plant locations to meet this year's Nano production needs.
Tata Motors, India's largest auto maker, will introduce its small car Nano--considered the world's cheapest--in Nigeria within next 18 months, ahead of its planned launch in Europe.
With more than 2.5 million users since April, the 'Nano game' on Zapak.com is a huge hit on the online gaming website. In the racing game, the player has to reach the destination within a specified time limit. He begins by styling his Nano and choose the colour, wheels etc.The car is then ready for a drive where the player has to manoeuver the Nano between crossing pedestrians and other obstacles like manholes etc.
In all, Tata Motors received 206,703 applications for the Nano. It also said that deliveries to the first batch of 100,000 applicants will begin in July and is expected to be completed by the last quarter of 2010. The company is presently manufacturing the Nano at its plant in Uttarakhand; production at the car's mother plant at Sanand, Gujarat, will only start later this year or early next year.
Gandhi said for the first time he has seen that all sections of the society in the state were 'protesting', whether it was the Patidars, Dalits, anganwadi workers or farmers.
Tata Motors, India's third-largest car maker, plans to use the platform of its low-cost small car Nano to build electric and hybrid cars.
Tata Group said that Tata Motors should target exports of the car in the developing countries like Brazil, China, Indonesia and Russia, where the growth rate is more than 10 per cent.
Jamshedpur gave birth to Telco (now Tata Motors) which has just launched the low-cost Nano; Jamshedpur, according to the 35-year old Tata Housing Development Company managing director Brotin Banerjee, is what inspired Tata Housing to launch its Shubh Griha low-cost housing project in Mumbai.
India's largest automotive group said it had received 203,000 pre-paid orders worth Rs25bn ($507m) for the Nano, the world's cheapest car, which it put on sale for a 16-day booking period which ended on April 25.
Even after people rushed to various centres to book the Nano on Saturday, the last official day for doing so, dealers undertook bookings on Sunday and Monday, breaching the time-line set by Tata Motors.
Tata Motors was, till late on Saturday, collating booking numbers it had received from over 30,000 sale points from over 1,000 towns and cities. It will announce the final figure only on April 28. Tata Group insiders said that, till Saturday afternoon, the total bookings could range between 650,000 and 800,000. With more customers likely to join the bandwagon later in the day, the final number could be close to one million.
Nano vendors say if all-India bookings cross 500,000, Tata Motors may have to explore the option of having a satellite plant to its present mother factory at Sanand near Ahmedabad. Many who had taken up space at the vendor park in Singur, the centre of the main dispute with the give-us-our-land-back agitationists led by the opposition Trinamool Congress, are hanging on in this hope.
India's first woman photographer Homai Vyarawalla, who is eagerly waiting to drive a Nano after she parted with her 55-year-old Fiat, has been offered the first 'people's car' by a Tata Motors dealer in Vadodara.
Within 15 days of opening the registration process for Nano, its Rs 1 lakh car, Tata Motors has sold nearly 5,00,000 application forms, raking in Rs 15 crore (at Rs 300 each). Distributors associated with the Nano bookings said most of the forms were likely to translate into bookings.
Zahir Haq lost his farmland to the Nano factory, but still applied for a car, when bookings for the Tata Motors Rs 1 lakh car opened at Singur on April 9. And he is not alone: an appreciable number of Singur residents booked the Nano through the bank branches in the area, with the State Bank of India branch as the nodal point.
Bookings for Tata Motors' much-waited small car 'Nano' started across the country on Thursday and will continue till April 25.
"The amount payable to the company at the time of booking is Rs 95,000, and the bank would lend this money to the applicant at a less than 10 per cent interest," said S K Goel, chairman and managing director of UCO Bank. He said the scheme offered by UCO was different from that of the State Bank of India, in the sense that UCO would lend any amount less than Rs 95,000 to the customer depending on their need.
"I will not ride in the Nano which has been manufactured with the people's blood," said Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee whose party has been blamed for the shifting of Tata's small car factory from West Bengal.
Because of its 'low' price tag, many customers opting to buy a used car may plump for a new Nano, though it comes comparatively with lesser cubic capacity, R Srivatsan president of MyTVS, part of the TVS Group engaged in selling used cars told PTI.
Tata Motors now eyes the US, European and African markets.
While the Nano is priced at Rs 1.12 lakh, Bajaj Auto's RE petrol variant costs about Rs 90,000, while its diesel variant is pegged at Rs 1.2 lakh. Analysts also say Bajaj can drop prices without any problem. "Bajaj Auto has been in the three-wheeler segment for 60 years. Which means their plants are fully depreciated and they can afford to lower the prices, which other manufacturers can't do," says a top executive from a competing three-wheeler brand.
Typically, about 70 per cent of a car dealer's revenue comes from businesses like servicing, arranging finance, sale of spare parts and accessories, insurance renewals, offering driving lessons, etc. A New Delhi-based dealer said even those ancillary services might not fetch them the margins they earn from servicing other models of Tata Motors like Indica and Indigo.
Rakesh Oberoi, a Tata Motors dealer, said he was getting hundreds of enquiries related to Nano everyday. Tata Motors was given over 950 acres of prime land by the state government at Pantnagar for setting up its manufacturing facility.
The country's largest car maker, Maruti Suzuki India, on Thursday said that "Tata Nano" may have a marginal impact on the sales of its entry level small car Maruti 800 but ruled out cutting its price.
The country's largest bike maker, Hero Honda, on Thursday said the launch of the Rs 1 lakh car 'Nano' will not have any impact on the two-wheeler industry.
BMC authorities had sent notices to Tata Motors owner Ratan Tata and Parsi Gymkhana officer-bearer P C Cooper for putting up 14 unauthorised hoardings at the venue of the Nano launch. "They paid fine of Rs 112,986 today (Wednesday). The hoardings were removed immediately on Tuesday and a fine was imposed on both the parties under the Mumbai Municipal Corporation Act, for not taking prior permission," said Deputy Municipal Commissioner (Zone I) Kishore Kshirsagar.
A 96-year-old woman, Homai Vyarawala from Vadodara has sold her 55-year-old original Fiat car to buy the Tata Nano.
The bookings for Rs 1 lakh Nano car by the Tata Motors are pouring in from all parts of the country as the sole booking agent SBI said it has distributed lakhs of applications for the world's cheapest car.
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