Tata Motors to put breaks on Nano car

​Hyderabad: Tata Nano, the dream car of Tata Group Chairman Emeritus Ratan Tata, is likely to slip into history soon as Tata Motors has no plans to upgrade the micro car to meet BS-VI emission standards which will come into force in April 2020.

“BS-VI is going to happen from April 1 of 2020, so all products of Tata Motors may not meet BS-VI norms and we may not invest in upgrading all the products. Nano is one of them," Mayank Pareek, 

President of Passenger Vehicle Business Unit, Tata Motors, told the media here on Thursday. He was here to launch Tata Harrier, the automaker’s new sports utility vehicle priced from Rs 12.69 lakh (ex- showroom, Hyderabad) 

Tata Motors, which launched Nano in 2009 with much fanfare, established an exclusive manufacturing facility at Sanand in Gujarat where the micro car is currently being produced. However, the tiny car’s sales hit nadir due to poor response from customers. In December, Tata Motors sold just 88 units of Tata Nano, down from 94 units in December 2017. Pareek also indicated some of the existing products of Tata Motors would also be discontinued owing to the BS-VI norms.  

On the BS-VI vehicles, he said it was a challenge for auto makers as the Supreme Court guidelines do not allow car registrations other than BS-VI after April 1, 2020. On the sales, he said during the last 36 months, Tata Motors outperformed the market. For April-December period, the company clocked 22.4 per cent upswing in sales while the industry grew by 4.4 per cent.

The carmaker which had market share of 2.8 per cent in passenger car segment three years back increased it to about seven per cent now, riding on the success of its newly-launched models. Meanwhile, the automaker is betting big on the newly-launched Harrier SUV to increase its market share further. 

“Built on theOMEGA ARC, which is derived from Land Rover’slegendary D8 Platform, the Harrier is a testament of our continued efforts to deliverglobalproducts. The passenger vehicle business is going strength to strength on the back of new products and the Harrier promises to further strengthen our market presence by surpassing all current benchmarks,” said Pareek. Powered by Kryotec 2.0 diesel engine that delivers 140 PS power and 350 Nm torque, the new SUV comes with multi-drive mode.