Sales of Tata Nano, billed to drive the company’s growth in the current decade, are set to plummet to a six-year low in the current financial year.

Sales of the car at 13,333 units till January this fiscal are less than a quarter of wholesale volumes of 53,848 units registered two years back and less than fifth of peak sales of 74,527 units seen in 2011-12.

Tata Motors today reported 10.69 per cent increase in total sales at 44,225 units in February, as against 39,951 units in the same month last year.

Domestic sales of Tata commercial and passenger vehicles grew by 14.15 per cent at 40,314 units as compared to 35,315 units in February 2014, Tata Motors said in a BSE filing.

Weighed down by a staggering Rs 2,123-crore loss in the December quarter, Tata Motors, India’s largest automobile manufacturer, is offering a voluntary retirement scheme (VRS) to its employees to “enhance competitiveness”.

The scheme, the second in 13 months, has been extended to all categories of employees, including workmen and managerial cadres, against only to ‘white-collar’ employees the last time.

Mumbai: Tata group controlled Tata Motors Ltd, India’s largest auto maker by sales revenue, on Friday announced slew of initiatives including Voluntary Retirement Scheme (VRS) to enhance the company’s competitiveness.

The VRS is presently intended for the workmen, said the company in a release sent to BSE.

Ratan Tata, former chairman of Tata Sons, has confirmed Jaguar Land Rover, luxury vehicle arm of Tata Motors, is looking for a factory site in North America.

He said so to Automotive News, while a guest at the South Carolina Automotive Summit. Earlier this month, JLR executives met the governor of Georgia in the US to discuss setting up a new factory in the state, a local newspaper had reported.

Tata Motors, which had two years earlier objected to the creation of quadricycles as a new vehicle category, citing low safety standards, now seems to be toeing a very different line. The automaker, India’s largest by revenues, is quietly developing under ‘project Bravo’ its own quadricycle with a new petrol engine, Business Standard has learnt.

A launch date has not yet been fixed but industry sources say this quadricycle could be based on Tata’s Iris light commercial vehicle platform and hit the roads around 2018. Such a timeline could make Tata one of the last entrants in a category where Bajaj already has a lead with the RE60.

Chennai-based truck and bus maker Ashok Leyland has not given up on its maiden car venture, for which it piggy-backed on Japanese giant Nissan, despite extremely poor sales.

The multi-seater van Stile saw sales of just 311 units in the April-January period, which has more than halved compared to the same period previous year that witnessed sales 694 units.

Tata Motors is planning to launch new variants of its small commercial vehicle (SCV) Ace Zip incorporating more features aimed at providing additional power and load as also covering new application areas.

The company is undertaking some technological upgrades such as hub reduction, higher ground clearance as also new fuel options like CNG. It is also planning an electric version of its micro truck Tata Ace Zip, launched in May 2011. The company celebrated 100,000th roll-out of the small truck last week at its Dharwad plant.

Tata Motors on Tuesday reported a marginal increase in global sales, including Jaguar Land Rover, at 80,499 units in January.

The company had sold 80,163 units in the same month last year. In the passenger vehicles category, the global sales last month were at 49,821 units as against 50,042 units in January 2014, Tata Motors said in a statement.

Tata Motors’ Q3FY15 consolidated operating performance (after adjusting for one-off provisions/incentives) was marginally below our expectations. JLR’s sales realisation was above expectations by 4% but its Ebitda margin (after normalising the impact of annual incentives received in Q3) was 52bps lower than our expectations. Overall, JLR’s absolute Ebitda (earnings before interest taxes and amortisation) was in line with our expectations.

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