The Hindu Business Line : ‘Nano may not be made in other plants for now’

New Delhi, Jan 11 Tata Motors plans to expand the capacity of its Singur plant by 1 lakh units to about 3.5 lakh units and only after it starts working to its full capacity will the company look at other sites for manufacturing its Nano car.

“Once we exhaust this capacity, we should be able to look at other plants,” Tata Group and Tata Motors’ Chairman, Mr Ratan N. Tata said. The company also expects that the variants of the car should be able to bring profits for the company. Mr Tata has also made it clear that the fear about the car choking up the traffic was unfounded because to produce so many cars would need huge capacity.

“Tata Motors also does not have the reserves to produce that many numbers,” he said.

Mr Tata admitted that the toughest part of the entire project was “continuing to believe that we could do it. “I never felt that the project would not be able to go through. But we were concerned about the time it would take and whether we will be able to launch it at this Auto Expo,” he said.

He said even though several reports suggested that the Rs 1-lakh car would end up costing more, the Tatas took it up as a challenge to peg down the price of the car at the same level. “I kept quiet and did not react because I took it up as a challenge to keep the price at the level we had promised,” he said.

He said there may not be any brand ambassador for the small car but it will be aggressively marketed across the country. He, however, cautioned that it was not appropriate to second guess the minds of the customers. “My plea to everyone is let the customers decide (about the car),” he said. “The final verdict will be from the customers,” he said.

On retirement

On the issue of retirement, Mr Tata said he had not made up his mind yet. “Everybody has a desire to step aside and do whatever one wanted to do. (I have) a great desire to change the gears. No one would be happier to step aside,” he said.

But Mr Tata was categorical about his decision to keep his promise he made sometime ago that he would name those who acted against the small car project.

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