Carlos Ghosn says Renault-Nissan-Bajaj small car will be priced lower than Nano

The ultra low-cost car that the joint venture of the French car major Renault and Bajaj is working on may be priced below the `Tata Nano’, Mr Carlos Ghosn, Chief Executive Officer of Renault and Nissan, said on Thursday.

Speaking to journalists of The Hindu group of publications, Mr Ghosn said the alliance with Bajaj would come up with products “below and above” the Nano. When asked specifically if there would be a car produced priced below the Nano, he replied in the affirmative. “What we are doing is, we are moving from a tricycle to a car and trying to match the Nano price point in a different way,” he said.

Asked what he thought of the Nano, he said he had the car cut into “I don’t know how many pieces” and Renault- Nissan had analysed every single piece. “We’ve made analysis of the strengths and weaknesses and have taken the good ideas and implemented them in some of our cars,” Mr Ghosn said.

He pointed to an interview of the Tata group Chairman, Mr Ratan Tata, in which Mr Tata had said that when he announced the Nano project everybody but Mr Ghosn laughed at him. “I said this is very serious, we need to take a look at this and need to challenge this,” he recalled. Mr Ghosn stressed that Renault- Nissan unique multi-partner strategy for India was in deference to the fact that India was a sophisticated, difficult market where a newcomer had to learn a lot. He likened the strategy to a student having different teachers for different subjects.

The learnings, he said, would come in handy when Renault- Nissan would address the next wave of emerging markets. He said that in the emerging BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, China) markets, the problem is one of how to move fast. But for the next wave of emerging markets, such as Indonesia, Iran and Nigeria, the issue would be one of getting the product right.

“The Indian market is going to be a key to other markets,” Mr Ghosn said, observing that some other markets are not developed because there are no (appropriate) cars.

“I think some of the cars in the `A minus’ segment, if we are able to adapt them to Indonesia, to Iran, to Iraq, to Nigeria, you are going to have a huge market. And these markets are still limited. It is not because there is no market, there is a market but there is no product. There is no product which is adequate to the capacity of people to buy a $2,500-3,000-3,500 cars. Because if the cheapest car you put on the market is $10,000 in Nigeria, there is no way Nigerian people are going to buy. If you bring a car at $3,000 in Nigeria, you are going to see a boom in Nigerian sales,” he said.

Describing the Tata Nano as “a very good first concept of what should be a popular car for the emerging markets,” Mr Ghosn said that learning from the Nano experience “is something that is very promising not only for India but for other emerging markets also.”

Source:Business Line 19/3/2010

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