Chennai: Nissan would introduce its EV car, Nissan Leaf, in India in this fiscal year itself. The car has already been launched everywhere around the world. In India, the Japanese automaker will bring its ‘Leaf 2’ in India first and is keen to add on advanced global products into its India portfolio.
Thomas Kuehl, Nissan’s India President, said during a media roundtable, “We will come very soon with the EV car, in this fiscal year. We will bring the Leaf 2 to India, the one that has launched everywhere around the world.”
“We’ll make it available for the public. We want to make sure that it is used by a lot of people,” he added.
As per the plan, a fleet of Nissan Leaf 2 will be brought to Chennai, at its 650-acre plant with Renault, for test drives and then we’ll see how we can scale it up, Kuehl said.
He said that the focus is to make the EV car cost competitive in the initial phase, though he didn’t talk about the possible price range of the car. He also told that the EV will not be a big volume but we will homologate it… We have already started working on the homologation.
In the process of homologation, the approval of vehicle or auto part is done so that the regulatory standards of a particular country are met.
With aggressive plans, the company will be coming up with new products every six months with the commencement of festival season this year. Kuehl said, “We had a one- to -two-year cycle for new products so far and now we are cutting it to six months.”
While the company plans to scale up its presence in the sports utility vehicle segment with the launch of a new vehicle, Kuehl also said he was confident about upcoming products from the Datsun brand providing competition to other automakers in the under Rs 10-lakh category of cars.
Since the Leaf will be imported as a completely built-up unit, analysts said it might take a toll on its pricing because of steep taxes on such vehicles. They estimate the ex-showroom price to be in the range of Rs 30-40 lakh in India.
