Renault-Nissan in no talks with Bajaj for ultra low car project

The long anticipated Renault-Nissan-Bajaj alliance now looks to be under the clouds because the partnering companies have not managed to pin down on agreeable terms over the Ultra low cost (ULC) car project. Renault India and Nissan were interested in Bajaj's ultra low cost car (ULC) plan few years back and had also assured Bajaj to purchase it if the production model pleased them. But after the employees of Renault-Nissan caught a glimpse of the Bajaj RE60 during its launch the previous month they haven’t yet given any answer to Bajaj Auto. It seems that the carmaker from France did not find the Bajaj RE60 meeting its expectations. They had desired a low cost car that could compete with small cars like the Nano from Tata but unfortunately their expectations were not completely fulfilled.

The RE60 had been in news even ahead of the beginning of the Auto expo. This small car from Bajaj had been a hot topic of the news amongst the sub small car segment as was the case with Tata Nano, which turned out to be everyone's favourite during the Auto Expo of 2010. However, all the doubts were cleared finally after the launch when Bajaj referred it to be an upgradation of rickshaw instead of including RE60 in the car category. The RE60 is powered by a 200cc DTSi engine taken from Pulsar and has been claimed to give a mileage of 35 kmpl. The rear engined car has an emission quantity of 60 gram per km of CO2.