Japanese car maker Nissan on Monday relaunched its Datsun brand globally by unveiling its hatchback ‘Datsun Go’ in India. To be priced less than Rs4 lakh, the five door hatchback will be launched in early part of the next year.
“We have a market share of little over 1.2 per cent in India at present. We are looking to take it to 10 per cent in the mid term (2016) and expect Datsun to play a significant role in this,” said Nissan Motor Co President and CEO Carlos Ghosn while reviving the Datsun brand after nearly three decades of discontinuing the same.
“The Indian car market had crossed the 3 million mark in 2011 and is expected to touch 4 million by 2016,” he added.
Elaborating more on the Datsun strategy, Nissan Motor Co Corporate Vice-President, Datsun Business Unit, Vincent Cobee said: “Datsun will contribute at least 50 per cent of total sales of Nissan by 2016 and made in India car would be the first of several models that will be launched later in 2014 in Indonesia, Russia and South Africa.”
Nissan plans to introduce 51 new models by 2015-16 globally and would introduce 10 models in India by 2016.
‘Datsun Go’ is powered by a 1.2 litre petrol engine and has been fully engineered in India. “It will be manufactured at the Renault Nissan plant in Chennai,” Ghosn added.
When asked if Datsun would also be exported from India, Cobee said some amount could be exported to South Africa while "there will be pooling of assets" in Indonesia as the market is somewhat similar with India but not with Russia.
Cobee also said that the company is looking to fully utilise the production capacity of the Chennai plant set up with alliance partner Renault to 100 per cent by 2016. “The plant has a total capacity of 4 lakh units and the output from the plant was nearly 2 lakh units in 2012,” Kobe added.
When asked if the company planned to invest more in the plant to expand the capacity, he said the company would consider about it after achieving 100 per cent capacity utilisation.