Nissan India expects 50% sales from Datsun

The car would be commercially launched in the first half of 2014 and would be priced below Rs 4 lakh

Nissan Motor India, set to launch the Datsun Go compact car in the country in the first half of 2014, hopes to get half its sales from the Datsun by 2016-17, said President Kenichiro Yomura said on the sidelines of the Nissan Safety Driving Forum in Ahmedabad. In the same period, he added, the company was aiming to garner a tenth of the country’s passenger vehicles market.

Yomura said, "The overall passenger vehicles market is expected to be five million vehicles then." The company has a market share of a little over a per cent in India.

Datsun Go would be below Rs 4 lakh. Rivals in this segment are Maruti Suzuki, General Motors and Tata Motors. Nissan brought down the price of small-car Micra, when it launched the Micra Active this year at Rs 3.5 lakh.

The company sold 17,400 vehicles in India between April and October, a fall of 26 per cent year-on-year. Its October sales were up 172 per cent to 5,057 units on the new Nissan Terrano.

Yomura said to raise market share, the company would focus on introducing models in segments it was not present in. The company will increase outlets to 300 by FY16 from 100.

On the Chennai plant it shares with Renault, Yomura said capacity would be increased to 480,000 units a year in the near term from 400,000. "This would not require significant investment, however. And, as for future expansion, we are carefully planning on that." At the moment, 70 per cent of the production at the plant is for Nissan, including exports.