It’s show time in Geneva, this week, as Europe’s main international motor expo hits the aisles.
This year’s event will understandably be a comparatively subdued affair but the Geneva motor show is still the place to go to check out the models we’ll be seeing on UK fleets over the next year or so.
One sign of the times is the number of new electric, hybrid and natural gas models making their debuts. Another is the level of interest being captured by a projected European version of Tata‘s ultra-inexpensive India-built Nano.
A Euro Nano would have to be chunkier and higher-priced than the original, but Tata could conceivably find themselves selling a 21st century version of Citroen‘s 2CV – the rugged, affordable, French icon that built up a six-year waiting list during the years of austerity following its launch in 1948.
Tata say they will market the aluminium-bodied Nano in Europe in about four years’ time. The export version will first have to gain an NCAP4 safety rating, although Tata have already appointed distributors in Spain and Italy. That will mean adding airbags and surviving side impact tests as well as the frontal crash required in its domestic market.
Even with these extra costs, the price of a Euro Nano might be less than £5000. Food for thought for cost-conscious private buyers.
Whether it would make a convincing fleet proposition is a very different question. Purely on the basis of cost (either going by list price or on a full whole life cost analysis), it would be very cheap in relative terms – but then, so is giving your staff scooters instead of cars.
In truth, it would take a seismic shift in commercial expectations to bring the Nano, in its expected form, close to meeting mainstream fleet requirements.
I’m convinced that compact, low-embodied-energy, low-emission cars will carve out a larger slice of the fleet market for themselves over the next decade. However, the keywords for a fleet specifier will undoubtedly remain comfort, sophistication and broad user appeal.
Let’s face it, if choosing the right fleet cars was simply a question of a going for a very low list price (and perhaps the ability to carry a dozen eggs across a ploughed field without breaking any), we’d still be ordering 2CVs today.
