Nano convoys fan out across India on awareness drive

The south bound convoy participating in the The Tata Nano Superdrive, which was flagged off from Sanand in Gujarat on 2 June arrived in Mumbai late on Sunday enroute to Pune and on its way to Goa today.

The three-Nano convoy is headed south while two similar three-car convoys separately headed towards Nothern and Eastern India.
The three convoys will each cover a distance of 12,000km in different directions.

The cities on the SuperDrive route are Surat, Mumbai, Pune, Goa, Bangalore, Kochi, Chennai in the south; Jaipur, Chandigarh, Delhi and Agra in the north and Bhopal, Patna, Kolkata, Bhubaneswar, Hyderabad on the eastern route. The teams of each convoy will interact with the public at famous landmarks in each city.

SuperDrive is envisaged as a month-long journey with the teams finally returning to Mumbai on 28 June 2010.

Meanwhile, Tata Motors plans to raise Nano production to 1,200 a day at its Sanand plant by December. The fast paced production of the world's cheapest four wheeler is set increase the pressure on automobile parts suppliers struggling to meet a frenzy for cars.

The company is currently operating a single eight-hour shift producing around 150 Nanos a day or 4,500 a month, at Sanand, according to people familiar with the plan. They say the company's Pantnagar plant has a similar production schedule.