A rising interest rate regime in an inflationary situation is bound to generate further heat in the highly competitive Indian car market, feels Kiminobu Tokuyama, Managing Director of Nissan India.
In an interaction with this correspondent here on Friday, Mr. Tokuyama said that Nissan was in an advantageous position to ward off competitive threats. In a situation like this, makers of truly high quality cars alone will survive, he said.
He said the Chinese market where Nissan emerged successful though the Japanese company did not go to that country early.
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The Managing Director felt that Nissan's entry into India was just in time.
He said that “India is a big market and an important one for us (Nissan).” Though the growth rate had decelerated, the Indian market was still growing, he said.
The increasing hiatus between diesel and petrol prices has seen people move more towards diesel vehicles. Since the introduction of diesel version in December last, there has been an increase in demand for diesel Micra cars. To a question, he said Nissan had at the moment no plan to bring electric cars to India.
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Mr. Tokuyama said the catastrophe in Japan would have no negative impact on the Indian operations. The local content in Micra, a car produced from its plant at Oragadam near here, is around 85 per cent.
He said Nissan's plan for India was going along as planned. He said the proposal to launch a sedan on the Micra platform was going according to schedule. He expected the company to launch the sedan in the current fiscal.
Nissan also was planning to launch a multi-utility vehicle in 2012. Since its launch in July last year, the company sold 14,000 Micra cars in India and exported 56,000 units.