NRI industrialist Swraj Paul-owned Caparo Group, a key vendor for Tata Motors' Nano project, is setting up a Rs 120-crore (Rs 1.2 billion) facility at Singur to supply sheet metal and vehicle frames for the world's cheapest car -- due for commercial launch later this year.
The Nano might have put a smile on millions of faces across the nation, but the traffic police in Bangalore is definitely not amused.
The actor seems to be in love with the new car, launched by the Tatas.
Faced with dwindling sales, Tata Motors has announced a four-year or 60,000 kilometre manufacturing warranty on its small car Nano in a bid to woo more customers.
Tata Motors on Friday said it will hike the prices of its passenger vehicles, excluding the Nano, by up to Rs 36,000 from April 1, to offset rising input costs.
Tata had in the past blamed corporate rivals, without naming them, for putting a spanner in the Nano project leading to land acquisition problems in West Bengal. As a result, the project had to be shifted out of Bengal to Sanand in Gujarat. And this came at a cost. The project originally estimated at Rs 1,500 crore (Rs 15 billion) now costs over Rs 2,000 crore (Rs 20 billion).
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.
The Tata Motors team led by its Managing Director G Ravikant and accompanied by Karnataka Industry Minister Murugesh Nirani visited three places in and around the twin cities of Hubli-Dharwad in Karnataka. The Belur Industrial area, Mummiatti and another area around the airport near Hubli were the three sites which were offered by the government.
Tata Motors on Tuesday said it will ramp-up capacity at its Sanand (in Gujarat) facility that manufactures its low-cost car, Nano, to over 20,000 units per month and 2.5-lakh units annually by this fiscal.
Nano's sales have been sliding. How does Tata Motors plan to bring the excitement back?
The company is hopeful of acquiring 600 acres of land by January 2010.
Is this the car you were waiting for? Will you buy the Nano?
'We are bothered about the people's problems. The government forcefully and illegally occupied the land at Singur -- that's why we opposed the forceful occupation of the land,' said firebrand political leader Mamata Banerjee, who forced the Nano project to move out of Singur.
Meanwhile, Tata Motors has described it as a "one-off incident" and clarified that there was no manufacturing or design lacunae in the Nano.
"We have no function at our manufacturing plant," said a Tata Motors official from its Pantnagar facility from where it was rolled out one year ago.
Tata Motors on Monday commercially launched its people's car, Nano, promising to stick to the Rs 100,000 price tag for the base model.
"We are conducting a feasibility study to see whether the car can be displayed inside some of the Westside," said a source. The feasibility study is being conducted in select showrooms that have a suitable entrance and enough space to accommodate the Rs 1 lakh (Rs 100,000) car. The car might be displayed at showrooms that meet the required specifications.
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.
He presented the first-ever National Creators' Awards at the Bharat Mandapam in the national capital.
"I am very satisfied and excited about this launch today and the Nano is not for my ego trip... certainly, not an ego trip at all," Ratan Tata said. The price of Rs 1 lakh was announced six years ago when the plan for the Nano was unveiled at an European motor show, he said. He added the fact that the company has kept its promise goes to show that it was not a "gimmick."
Nearly 60 vendors will move to the vendor park at Tata Nano's Sanand plant by March next year. The rollout of the car is set for the January to March quarter, and vendors will feed the plant at existing locations till they shift.
The Nano patrol car is fitted with visual and audible warnings, which include beacons, a siren and search lights apart from a medical kit.
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.
In 2006-07, TCS had employed 7,000 people in the eastern states.
Tata Motors has decided to stick to the Rs 1-lakh price tag -- plus value-added tax (VAT) plus transport charges -- for the car as the company believes hiking the price at this stage will be a 'breach of promise to the customers.'
A Nano-like mission to provide good-quality, good-performance has the power to make an incredible positive impact on the Indian economy.
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, currently produces Nano from its plants at Pantnagar in Uttarakhand and Sanand in Gujarat.
The Gujarat government admitted in the Assembly that it had paid Rs 456.79 cr.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
Go too fast in reverse and the fuel injection will be cut off! High engine temperature, misfire of the engine, injector failure and over speeding will also enable the chime of a buzzer and will flash a warning light on the dashboard. Before you dismiss this, please do know that the EMS controller is the best in the business. The electronic control unit, sensors and actuators are imported from Bosch, Germany.
In view of the expected significant demand and limited production capacity initially until the Sanand plant is fully ramped up to capacity, the Tata Nano will be available through a booking mode.
The Nano will be on display at Tata Motors dealerships from the first week of April 2009. Bookings will commence from the second week of April 2009.
The IIT Nano Centre will have fabrication facility in addition to scientific and structural characterisation facilities, R&D dean Prof Kartik Khilar said.
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.
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.
The truth is that this is an impressive realisation of a corporate vision, a car long-promised, designed explicitly to hit a price point, and one that will meet the needs of poorer consumers. It is safer than a bicycle and cleaner than an old moped.
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