News: Tata may also make Rs 1 lakh car abroad

(FE 26/11/2006) Kolkata - India may not be the only country to drive the much-talked about Rs 1-lakh car Tata Motors is planning to make. In the near future, the company might collaborate with a few global automobile majors to manufacture the people’s car elsewhere, Tata Motors managing director Ravi Kant said here Saturday.

“It’s heartening to tell you that even before the world can see the dream car, whose prototype has been developed, we have proposals from several global original equipment manufacturers for collaboration with us to make this car in their own countries,” Kant told reporters in Kolkata, without naming the companies that have come forward with the proposal.

Kant was, perhaps, trying to put to rest apprehensions expressed by a section of the automobile industry, particularly Tata Motors’ competitors, about whether the car would be able to meet global emission and passenger safety norms.

In April, Osamu Suzuki of Suzuki Motors said that in the wake of stricter safety and environmental norms, making a Rs 1-lakh car is not possible.

Kant said the company has finalised 50% of the vendors for the project and the rest will be selected shortly.

Allaying fears the project planned at Singur in West Bengal might get delayed due to obstacles in the way of acquisition of agricultural land, following stiff resistance by opposition leaders like Mamata Banerjee, Kant said progress as regards this was ‘extremely encouraging,’ with consent for 90% or 927 acres already received. He, however, refused to comment on when the car would actually hit the roads, saying it would be sometime in 2008. Ratan Tata had earlier said mid-2008 will be the deadline.

The plant, he said, will have the capacity to produce 2.5 lakh units a year.

The company might explore the setting up of a ‘follow-up’ plant in other states, considering demand generated. “We have proposals from other states for setting up these projects, but Singur will be the mother plant,” Kant said.