Nissan Teana to be assembled from SKD unit to increase its market share.

Nissan Motors in India plans to assemble the premium luxury sedan Nissan Teana in a semi knocked-down condition by last week of February, 2011. The Indian subsidiary of the Japanese auto giant looks to capture the domestic car market in its favour and the assembling of Nissan Teana will reduce the price of the luxury car and will help luring the customers. At present, the buyers pay almost 110 per cent of the import duty on these cars which are shipped as completely built units (CBU). Kiminobu Tokuyama, CEO and MD Nissan India, said that, the company has thought about all the available options to raise the volume of the car. As for Nissan Teana, the company is opting out for semi knocked-down (SKD) option. As per the reports, the SKD will begin somewhere in the middle of 2011. The luxury sedan Teana, will be assembled at the company's Orgadan manufacturing plant of Nissan- Renault in Chennai. The plant has a capacity of producing 2,00,000 units but as for now, only 70,000 units of hatchback Nissan Micra are being manufactured there.

Currently, the Japanese auto manufacturer ships Nissan Teana, Nissan X Trail, the small utility vehicle and the luxury sports car Nissan 370Z as CBU (completely built unit) from Japan. In India, the Central Board of Excise and Custom levies 60 per cent import duty on cars which are shipped as CBU with a powertrain of 1500 cc. Apart from the import tax, the buyers also pay various other taxes like countervailing tax, education and automobile cess, which calculates to a total of 100 per cent. In India, the new version of the luxury sedan Nissan Teana is powered with 2500 cc V6 petrol engine which comes with a price tag of Rs 26 lakh. When the company will start manufacturing the sedan in a completely knocked -down unit (CKD) and the semi knocked-down unit, the import duty will reduce to 10 per cent and even after the additional charges it will be 25 per cent only.

Tokuyama added that, the import tax on the completely built units are extremely high which has made the car dearer and also limited the growth of the luxury sedan. Teana was launched in 2007 and since then, Nissan has sold 764 cars in India. Nissan Motors has sold 170 cars of the luxury Teana till November in this year over 207 units sold in the previous year. Nissan Motors expects to expand in its portfolio by launching nine vehicles in the domestic car market by 2012 as it has targeted a sale of one lakh cars every year. Among the nine vehicles it plans to launch, five cars will be manufactured in India and the rest of the four car models will be imported from the home ground. Nissan also plans to bring in a global saloon and for that, the manufacturing will begin in Chennai after the second quarter of 2011. Later, it will also plans to bring Nissan NV200, a multi purpose car in 2012.

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