Tata Nano To Be Discontinued

A decade after Tata Motors first showcased the Nano at the 9th Auto Expo in January 2008, the company is set to officially announce plans to discontinue its small car. The announcement will be made by Natarajan Chandrasekaran, Chairman, Tata Motors at the carmaker’s 73rd Annual General Meeting on Friday, August 3, 2018. The move to discontinue the Nano is also in line with Tata Motor’s two-platform strategy for its future models. Both the platforms – namely ALFA and OMEGA – will be modular and are aimed to help the carmaker achieve greater economies of scale. Tata Motors’ decision to pull the plug on the Nano comes at a time when the entry-level segment as a whole in India is shrinking as more and more first-time buyers are jumping to higher segments.

Sales of the Nano, which was dubbed the ‘world’s cheapest car’, have dipped sharply in the past year. Tata Motors sold just 65 units of the model in April-June 2018 – down 92 percent from the 872 units sold in the same period of the previous year. In June 2018, Tata sold 3 units and produced one single unit of the Nano.