Re: Nissan India : The Way Forward This is another confused company.
Frankly speaking I have never seen a company with such a wide range of promising products fritter away their chances in India doing nothing.
They are forever under the impression that India means cheap and Indians will not pay for good vehicles and premium products. Their senior management still thinks India is a "land of snake charmers and elephants".
I guess they have not seen the likes of Kia and Hyundai who all sell million rupee plus vehicles; vehicles which are dynamically average but loaded to the gills with features. And they are not cheap. Not at all.
Nissan's bug-eyed Micra was a very well engineered solid car. They never replaced it with the new generation Micra. Had the new generation Micra been launched and marketed well, i20 and Swift would have got some healthy competition.
Same story with the Sunny.
Maruti now is planning to launch the FRONX as a series hybrid range extender in 2025. They are targetting 35kmpl as certified fuel efficieny and possibly will achieve that figure too.
The sad part: NISSAN had a similar series hybrid called the NISSAN NOTE which could have run rings around every other car in the fuel efficiency stakes. Dynamically the NOTE was a well sorted out vehicle. Interior space was very impressive by hatchback standards possibly more than the Honda JAZZ. NISSAN even imported few NOTE's for testing and evaluation in India but never went ahead launching it. Another bungle. Another chance lost.
Moving on to EV's. Remember a car called LEAF? The NISSAN LEAF that is. It was the grandfather of all mass market EV's in the WORLD! NISSAN was seriously planning to bring it into India then all went quiet! If the LEAF had been in the market now, we would be talking less about Nexon EV's, and BYD Atto's.
We have been hearing about CBU imports of Nissan Patrols, X-Trail's, Qashqai since donkey's ears. Some cars were imported for customer clinics as well but then again everything went "phhhuttttt"
They just have a one car wonder, the MAGNITE, which is an honest but average product. It scores highly on the value for money front but not much on anything else.
Yes, it looks pleasant, but with its harsh unrefined mechanicals, weak entry level engine/model variants, stiff ride: the Magnite is losing out fast to the new crop of entry level crossover's and SUV's.
Mitsubishi is now a part of Nissan. In the Rs 50lakh SUV segment, don't you think the PAJERO has got what it takes,(and possibly more), to fight it out with the overpriced Toyota Fortuner?
Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi needs to think afresh about the Indian passenger car market.
They need to cast off the thoughts of "Oooohh..India is only for cheap cars", (remember the Datsun debacle Nissan?) and "Customers won't pay premium pricing for good products" etc.
They need to set right their dealer network localise, their global products and start selling them here. And watch the sales meter tick.
Just ask Hyundai and Kia. |