this story originally appeared in on may 13 2013mumbai as the nano the small car from tata motors has hit a prolonged rough patch in the marketplace indias largest automaker by turnover is considering an alternate plan that envisages producing another car alongside the small car at its sanand plant in a bid to optimise production capacities at the gujarat plant the move is part of an overall plan to rejig production at its factories in ranjangaon in pune and sanand in gujarat and comes at a time when the automaker posted its secondlowest wholesale dispatches of 948 nanos in the month of april clearly underutilising its 25 lakh units et has learnt that tata motors is considering production of its new compact car which is under development at the sanand plant which is expected to roll out by 2015 the aim is to optimise production at sanand facility and expedite return on investment on a project which has not met milestones and has been delayed severely on account of low nano volumes a person close to the development said the company had recently conducted a feasibility study to produce x0 the new compact car based on the indica platform there is a thought process on producing the x0 in sanand with capacity utilisation at less than 20 at present the company is taking a major hit on its cost per car from sanand the idea is to improve capacity utilisation and gain from the tax incentives too said the person requesting anonymity an email query to tata motors did not elicit a reply the average monthly nano dispatches in the second half of fy13 slipped to 2400 units a month from 6600 units a month in the first half before falling to its secondlowest dispatch in april 2013 there are several reasons for the low dispatch numbers of nano including the overall macroeconomic environment which pulled down the car sales by 10 per cent in april and the companys intention to liquidate existing stock before it starts manufacturing the refreshed nano which will hit the market soon people close to the company explained wholesale numbers do not reflect the true picture for the model retail sales have improved and it is easily running in several thousands said the person close to the company in the coming months expect the numbers to be much higher with 2013 model year nano he added while production of a new variant and the new model in sanand will take some time tata motors has moved the production of its hatchback vista completely to the joint venture plant in ranjangaon as part of the larger production optimisation plan this will help the company gain on tax incentives unlike the pimpri plant which is almost fully depreciated said a person close to the development instead of producing diverse products in one plant having similar platforms will help in economies of scale he reasoned currently all of the manza vista and a large chunk of indica