BENGALURU (TIP): Japan car maker Nissan on Wednesday said that it is working on bringing the much-awaited electric car Nissan Leaf to India, but declined to put a date on it as it believes that issues relating to tax and infrastructure in the country are yet to be sorted out.

Arun Malhotra, managing director, Nissan India told FE that the company will launch the product at an opportune time. “We are ready, but there are some issues relating to government taxation and infrastructure. At this point of time, it does not make business sense to launch, you will have to wait and watch,” he said.

The car company claimed that it has the pedigree and the necessary R&D might to launch Leaf in India and the team in Chennai is on the ‘back-end job’, not only for Indian market, but also for other overseas markets. Nissan Leaf is a compact five-door hatchback electric car manufactured by Nissan and introduced in Japan and the United States in December 2010, followed by various European countries and Canada in 2011.

As of September 2016, the Nissan Leaf is the world’s all-time best selling highway-capable all-electric car with almost 240,000 units sold since 2010.

Malhotra said as part of its plan to have a bigger play in the domestic market , Nissan will be rolling out Nissan GT-R on December 2, in Mumbai. Nissan had in September announced the start of pre-booking for the 2017 Nissan GT-R in India. The new GT-R was unveiled at the New York International Auto Show in March this year . “It is going to be an engineering marvel,” he quipped.

Elaborating on the future plans, he said that the focus will be to increase the network and sales. Besides, number of products has to be scaled up.

Malhotra said that the senior management of the company has already announced that between now and 2021, it will introduce 8 new models in India across Nissan and Datsun brands. Nissan Motor India reported domestic sales of 6,108 vehicles in October2016 versus 3,246 units sold in the same month a year ago. Source: FE