Vehicles above 1500-1999 cc face duty of Rs. 15,000 Those with 2000 cc and above will cost Rs. 20,000 more In a firm move to discourage fuel guzzlers on the road in the wake of rising fuel prices, the government on Friday imposed a stiff additional excise duty of about Rs. 15,000-20,000 as a specific levy on large cars, MUVs (multi-utility vehicles) and SUVs (sports utility vehicles).

Pradeep Gooptu & S Kalyana Ramananthan / Singur/ Chennai June Even as Tata Motors is racing against time to get its new Singur plant near Kolkata ready for commercial roll-out of the Nano by October 2008, the company may be needing an out-of-the box solution to overcome some delays in the integrated plant and component park structure proposed for the vehicle. Tata Motors plants in Pune and the new one in Pantnagar (Uttarakhand) might be marked as standby options should the Singur facility not be ready by October.

Forms team to keep costs closer to the small car's sale price of Rs 1 lakh. Tata Motors may charge the losses on its small car Nano, the world's cheapest car at Rs 1 lakh, against the profit it earns from selling trucks, according to industry analysts. Chairman Ratan Tata has pledged to sell Nano, touted as the common man's car, at Rs 1,00,000 even though the cost of making and selling the car is expected to be higher because of rising steel, battery and other input prices. Tata Motors has formed a team to evolve a plan to keep the costs closer to the sale price.

Signs Long-Term Agreements With Ford For Future Support In Major Areas Tata Motors finally got the keys for Jaguar and Land Rover, the two British marques it acquired from Ford for $2.3-billion, and announced long-term partnership agreements with the US auto major for future support. The company, that earlier this week announced plans for three rights issues to fund the acquisition, said it would be an all-cash transaction even as Ford would contribute about $600 million to the pension plans of the two brands.

Not so long ago, China was known as the

Two Tata Motors officials, water treatment plant in-charge BK Sarkar and DGM (safety) Samir K Ghatak, were arrested on Wednesday night from their residences. They were arrested on the charges of negligence in the chlorine gas leakage case at the company's water treatment plant earlier this week.

FACED with rising crude oil prices, Indian automakers are getting back to the drawing board to design more compact vehicles with smaller engines that burn lesser fuel. While a vehicle with smaller engine may be less powerful than current models, it would be far more fuel efficient, say most top auto companies including Mahindra & Mahindra and Tata Motors.

The first Nano car will roll out from the Singur plant in West Bengal, Ravi Kant (pictured) said, ending speculation over the possibility of rolling out Nano from other locations. Kant said that the company is on schedule as far as the launch date of mid-October is concerned. Work at the plant is moving at a brisk pace. Fierce agitation from locals, a political backlash and controversies over land acquisition, recruitment of workforce, arrangement of basic utilities and water logging during the last monsoon had already pushed the original deadline back five or six months.

Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee reiterated here on Monday her demand that the 400 acres of land that she claims had been acquired from peasants in Singur without their consent for the setting up of the Tata Motors' car manufacturing project there should be returned to their owners. She scoffed at veteran Marxist leader Jyoti Basu's remark on Sunday that any attempt to sabotage the project would send the message to the people that the Trinamool Congress is against development.