Mumbai, July 16: After the hike in petrol prices, the ride is also going to get more expensive. On Friday, Tata Motors announced that its raising the price of the ‘people’s car’ Nano by 3-4 per cent.
In a statement, the company has cited rising raw material costs as the reason. Also, the company says that with the 2.5 lakh per year capacity Sanand plant operational, it will soon be able to supply the existing orders in a few months. That will be the final step before sales for the one lakh rupee car are thrown open. Tata Motors has not accepted any bookings for Nano after the intial booking window in June 2009. Analysts expect the company to open bookings for nano by end 2010. For the first lakh customers though, the Tata Motors will stick to the original price. Tata Motors has delivered around 45,000 Nanos to customers so far. Sales are expected to pick up now as the production constraint is gone.
Apart from the price hike, Tata Motors says that it has also begun intimating ‘retainee-customers’ that their cars are coming up for delivery. Retainee-customers are those who had retained their booking with the company though not selected among the first allottee-customers from out of the booking process of 2009. The retainee customers will be paying the additional price for the Nano. The terms and conditions at the time of booking said that the final price of the car would be notified only at the time of the delivery. However, the customers may not have to shell out the full amount in addition to what they have paid already. This is because they have also been getting interest on their deposit with the company.
Tata Motors is paying interest of 8.5 per cent on these deposits, starting from June 2009, the booking period and up to the delivery of the car.