Diesel and auto Nano next up for Tata

Tata working on diesel and automatic variants of small car. Diesel expected to be released end 2009 in time for full scale production at Sanand. Automatic to follow soon afterwards.

Tata Motors is expected to make a diesel and automatic variant of the Nano available for sale. While Tata's primary focus at the moment is on making sure the much talked about small car is made available to the public, it is also working on further diversifying the car's model range that currently consists of three variants (Nano, Nano CX and Nano LX).

The first diesel variants are likely to roll out once the company's Sanand plant is ready for full scale production. It would not be hard to imagine a diesel powered Nano setting new benchmarks in terms of operating costs with mileage that could very well be in excess of 25kpl.

The automatic variant will follow soon afterwards. Manufacturing the Nano's 'variomatic' CVT gearbox will be the Kinetic Group. The Pune based company is currently making the car's 4-speed manual gearbox. Kinetic is to share the load of supplying the CVT for the automatic variant with Avtec Ltd as well as Canadian firm CVTech-IBC.