The Tata Europa is a jazzed-up version of the Nano that we got to see at the Auto Expo in India last year, but there are some important changes.
The country's largest lender SBI on Friday said it has been appointed as the sole booking agent for the world's least expensive car, Nano, from the stable of Tatas.
The Nano's mileage is being projected between 17 to 20 km per litre. Last month, Tata Motors had conducted various test runs of Nano on the hilly, serpentine roads of Uttarakhand. Government officials in Dehra Dun claimed the company has given a commitment to Uttarakhand Chief Minister B C Khanduri that it would roll out the first Nano from the state itself.
Tata Motors' Nano, the small car seen as a symbol of India's expertise in frugal engineering, is likely to be launched on March 3. Billed as the world's cheapest, the small car's first recipients may be celebrities, including political leaders, social workers, sports stars and film stars.
The wait for the world's cheapest car could soon be over as Tata Motors could commence limited commercial production of the Rs 100,000 Nano from alternate locations so that the first car could roll out towards the end of March 2009 from Pantnagar till the mother plant came up in Sanand near Ahmedabad.
On the company's performance after entering the Indian market last year, he said the car maker has so far sold 100 units. The company right now delivers cars to customers as completely built units from its headquarters in Sweden.
When minister of state for industries Saurabh Patel announced on Monday the new industrial policy in a press conference, there were a flurry of questions pertaining to the incentives given to the Tata's car project, which was relocated from Singur in West Bengal to Sanand near Ahmedabad.
People in the hilly town of Gopeshwar in Chamoli district were recently surprised to see the Nano, Tata Motors' controversial Rs 100,000 car, parked on a roadside.
Tata Motors' plans to roll out the first of its Rs 1-lakh (Rs 100,000) small car, the Nano, from Uttarakhand, were boosted today after a high-powered state government committee under Chief Minister B C Khanduri allotted it nearly 45 acres of land to expand the Pantnagar unit.
Tata Motors' planned vendor park at its 1,100-acre Nano project site in Gujarat may be delayed by at least six months, triggering speculation among suppliers of a delay in the Nano project. The delay is mainly on account of global recession, which has slowed down demand for vehicles, according to Rajkot-based suppliers.
Meanwhile, pre-construction work has begun at the Nano plant site in Sanand near Ahmedabad. Spread across an area of 1,100 acres of land, the plant will bear an investment of Rs 2,000 crore (Rs 20 billion).
Official sources said that top company officials recently met Uttarakhand Chief Minister BC Khanduri and demanded 35 acres of additional land for expanding the facility. Earlier, the company had sought 55 acres of land at Pantnagar for housing purpose. The government is yet to take a decision in this regard.
Tatas' drive into Sanand area for their Nano project has given a major fillip to Mumbai-based real estate major K Raheja Corp to set up its support infrastructure projects in the area.
"We probably could have sold another 20-30 per cent if there was an easy availability of vehicle finance. People continue to be interested in buying cars, but the sheer lack of finance is a concern.The buyer has to decide what his money can get him. I don't feel threatened that a customer of Chevrolet is going to buy the Nano instead," says Karl Slym, president and MD, General Motors India.
Working round-the-clock over the past few days, an Indian Institute of Science team is buildingan indigenous ventilator prototype for Covid-19 victims, and it is expected to be ready in the current month itself. A ventilator can be a life-saver for patients whose lungs are damaged by the Covid-19 infection. But India, like all countries grappling with this pandemic, is likely to face a large shortage of ventilators.
Majority of the revenue for the Indian IT industry continues to come from low value addition jobs like manpower provisioning and low-end support services, Modi said in Bangalore at the ICT event Bangalore IT.biz. Modi stressed that the IT industry has to reinvent itself, must focus on innovations, and on systems rather than being comfortable with services.
Farmers say they are paid lesser by Rs 110 per sq meter for road project. A day before the announcement of Nano project at Northcote farm in Chharodi village in Gujarat, the Ahmedabad district collector along with revenue department officials had assured the farmers that they would be duly compensated for the amount of land they given for four lane road project.
"Tata Motors officials have conveyed to us that they are thinking of setting up a small permanent production unit of Nano in Pantnagar," Chief Secretary I K Pande said. The Tata Motors spokesperson said, "It is Tata Motors's view that, even after the mother plant at Sanand becomes operational, Tata Motors will continue to manufacture a certain volume of the Nano at Pantnagar. We do not have any other information to share."
The farmers of Khoda and Bol village on Tuesday claimed that a large portion of the proposed 1100 acre for Nano is their ancestral property and the land was given for the cattle farm which falls under Anand Agriculture University. The state government has given half of the 2200 acres of land to the Tatas.
Before Tatas decided to set up the small car plant in Gujarat there were reports that the corporate group may opt for Pantnagar in Uttrakhand -- where Tata Ace pick-up trucks are being manufactured -- to produce Nano. For the inflow of industries into the state, Khanduri credited the 10-year special package announced by then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 2003.
The land acquisition row seems to chasing the Tata's Nano car project even out of Singur as farmers of villages near Sanand, the project's new address, have staked claim on the plot.
Within days of exiting from West Bengal, Tatas have decided to relocate their Rs 1 lakh-Nano car project in Gujarat, after scouting many sites including that Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.
The company had started test runs for engines at its Pune facility in September after it work was stopped indefinitely at its Singur plant from August 29, leading to the abandoning of the Singur project site on October 3.
With hundreds of new industries setting shop at Pantnagar, just a stone's throw away, the economic impact is quite discernible in Rudrapur, the district headquarters of Uttarakhand's Udham Singh Nagar district. And now that Tata Motors is said to be gearing up to launch the first Nano from Pantnagar, there is fresh excitement in the area. The business community here is ready to give a red carpet welcome to Nano.
Sources in the West Bengal government's finance department said the state had made budgetary provisions that would run into several hundred crores every year for 20 to 30 years to attract Tata Motors' Nano project to Singur.
''The meeting between the state government and the Tata Motors officials will be held on September 28,'' Chief Secretary Amit Kiran Deb told reporters at the state secretariat. The meeting will take place amidst speculation that Tata Motors is preparing to pull out from Singur due to continued agitation by Trinamool Congress-led opposition demanding return of 400 acres of land to 'unwilling' farmers.
A team at California University has created a way to make square, nanoscale, chemical patterns that may be used in the manufacture of integrated circuit chips 'as early as 2011' -- it is called block co-polymer lithography. They have also built a process for creating features on silicon wafers between five and 20 nanometres thick.
Alan Rosling, executive director, Tata Sons Limited, said on Monday in New York that it will be a sad day for the Tatas if the project to manufacture Nano, the company's Rs 1-lakh small car that has generated worldwide interest, cannot succeed in Singur, West Bengal.
Tata Motors, which suspended work at the Nano plant in West Bengal's Singur in view of continued confrontation at the site early this month, has held talks with Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi over relocating the facility to the state.
Karnataka chief minister told reporters that Karnatala would be glad to have the Tatas in the state following a meeting with Tata Motors Managing Director G Ravikanth in Bangalore on Thursday. Tata Motors has a manufacturing facility at Dharwad in the north Karnataka region, where it produces buses and tractors.
If Tata pulls out now, it will be a huge blow to the state, and will be expensive for Tata too, as the company has irretrievable sunk cost in Singur of between Rs 350 crore (Rs 3.5 billion) and Rs 500 crore (Rs 5 billion). Among the will be Mamata Banerjee, who will find it hard to live down the ignominy of having deprived her state of a project that has made news the world over.
India's largest car maker Maruti Suzuki on Thursday said it has no plans to cut the price of Maruti 800 to compete with Tata Motors' Nano.
The industry minister said the small car project could not come up if 400 acre was returned as demanded by Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee. Nirupam Sen, who had discussed the Singur project with Tata in Kolkata on Thursday night, said that the state government wanted to work out a solution and was was open for talks to find out an acceptable solution.
Terming Tata Motors Nano project as "very important for Bengal and industrialisation", CPI-M Politburo member Sitaram Yechuri was on Thursday hopeful that talks between the West Bengal government and Trinamool Congress on the issue would lead to a solution.
Just months ahead of the launch of its Rs 1-lakh Nano, the world's cheapest car, automaker Tata Motors has started the process of expanding the dealership network for passenger cars.While the applications have already been invited for dealerships in Delhi and adjoining Ghaziabad, the company officials said that similar exercise is also being carried out in other parts of the country, wherever there is a need for expansion.
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.
Ashish Narsale/Rediff.com gives you the lowdown on the latest Redmi phones in the market.
Realty major Parsvnath Developers on Wednesday joined hands with Sabeer Bhatia, co-founder of Hotmail, to develop a 11,138 acres knowledge city near Chandigarh, where the company will initially invest Rs 400 crore (Rs 4 billion).
Noting that the company's Nano plant in Singur, West Bengal, was expected to come into operation in the last quarter of 2008, Ratan Tata, in a letter to shareholders in the annual report for 2007-08, said that manufacturing facilities would be expanded to meet domestic and global demand in the future. "New variants of the Nano are also currently under development to meet the new environmental and fuel price challenges".
Banks make criteria tougher for funding the car. Tata Motors Chairman Ratan Tata's dream to help the common man own a four-wheeler may meet its bete noire in bankers as ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and rival lenders realign rules to finance the Nano, touted to be the world's cheapest car.
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