1 Sept 2009;economictimes.indiatimes.com:Nandini Sen Gupta & Sumit Chaturvedi:Even before Tata Motors starts full-scale production of Nano at its Sanand plant in Gujarat, suppliers of key components of the world’s cheapest car are being approached by some of the largest carmakers for cost-effective technology takeaways from the project. According to German component maker Robert Bosch, which developed engine and fuel injection technologies for the small car, some of its European clients are now asking for low-cost technologies from the Nano project to be transferred to them.
European carmakers Volkswagen and Daimler have sought some technologies developed by Bosch, said a local vendor who asked not to be named. The e46 billion components maker, however, refused to confirm the names.
The Tata Nano project has been a showcase project and is giving Bosch a good entry point with other original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) that were thinking of the same segment, said Bernd Bohr, member of the board of management at Bosch.
“The strategic direction is to learn from these low-priced vehicle projects for those in Europe, which will not be on the same price levels.to transfer good ideas we have developed here to other markets,” he said.
Bosch is already involved with the Nissan-Renault-Bajaj ultra low-cost car project. But the engine parts maker is also transferring its Nano learning to clients in Europe. “Bosch has acquired a large gasoline injection project in Europe where we have already used some of the ideas and achieved significant cost reduction,” Mr Bohr said.
Although these European projects are “still in the early development phase”, Bosch says it’s doing an encore of what it did with the Nano. “For the Nano project, we basically started with a clean sheet of paper, without a lot of baggage and came up with many ideas, which are definitely low-cost but provide sufficient functionality for the end customers,” Mr Bohr said. Bosch now wants to take this as a “new base to build upon for European and American projects.”
The interest of global vehicle makers or OEMs in the Nano project is understandable. The biggest draw is its low-cost and drawing board innovation. Bosch says it has had a lot of involvement from boards of European OEMs.
“They said, ‘How can this be done, how can an engine management system, say, be made within X-dollars?’ And we are quite open to discussing what can we do differently, come up with something which is simpler but with the same functionality,” Mr Bohr explained.
Meanwhile, the Nano itself will not see exports till Tata Motors ramps up capacity and moves to its new plant in Sanand. “Our current focus is to first face the demand in the Indian market as we are working from interim manufacturing facilities at Uttarakhand before our main plant at Sanand comes up. The supplies are therefore in limited quantities, so it will be our endeavor to fulfill demand in India before we can even start looking outside,” said Rajiv Dube, president-passenger vehicles, Tata Motors.
Once the capacity is ready and waiting, Nano will drive into overseas markets, and Europe is a priority market. Tata Motors has already displayed a European version of the Nano at the Geneva Motor Show called Nano Europa that will not only have a bigger engine, but is different in many other ways. However, the Europa launch is not imminent, Mr Dube said. The Nano was formally rolled out this summer and has been selling around 2,500 units per month.
Petrolstop is a division of Car Fuel Info Solutions, LLC Petrolstop.com is a registered trademark owned by Car Fuel info Solutions, LLC Website Design by Onazari Technical Solutions
News 
