Slashdot Mirror
$2500 Tata Nano Car Unveiled in India
theodp writes "After months of rumors and tantalizing leaks, Tata Motors has finally unveiled the Tata Nano, its already legendary $2,500 car that promises to change the face of not only the Indian car market, but the global auto industry. The tiny car is a four-door, five-seat hatch, powered by a 30 hp engine that gets 54 miles per gallon."
Would any one in the western world even think of buying this car? Even for driving in the cities/small towns?
I think this car would fare better in city markets. They can be used as taxis and replace the gas guzzling V8 Taxis that take up the road in NYC. With the size of the car being small, this can put more cars on the road.
Previewing comments are for sissies!
I've been waiting for these little micro-cars to come out on the market. I had high hopes for the "Smart Car", but it's price is up around $12,000, and now they are down to 40MPG or so.
I think we are entering a phase of American driving where people will have a tiny, one-person, gas-sipping commuter car to go to work every day, and a "family car" for long-distance travels on the weekends.
And before everyone freaks out about the safety, I figure it's safer than a motorcycle.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
you will never be able to buy one. not in the USA. The auto lobbiests try their hardest to keep cars like that out of the states. they cite BS things like safety and other things.
That's why it took the SMART almost 8 years to get into the USA. And after "Americanizing" it to make it "safe" (you Canadians and Europeans with your death traps!) it is no longer an affordable car but a expensive curiosity. The Smart can be purchased starting at $18,000 but mostly priced around $24,000 because the only model available is the luxury model. Yes I know this as I talked to the guys out at ZAP! for the past 5 years trying to get one, and now the local dealer that has 4 on the lot and has them priced even higher than the MSRP.
This car will never be allowed in the USA, you will hear "experts" claim how incredibly unsafe it is, and probably some claiming how bad it pollutes.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The Bug was not VW, Hitler, or Dr. Porsche's idea. It originated in Czech and was stolen, and built upon. It was very likely a much better car than the original Czech version, but it was not an original German idea. I wasn't there first hand to see this happen, but Germany paid restitution for the "stolen IP", so this is pretty much fact in the history books.
At $2500, a vehicle like this would be worth buying just for hacking.
You could take the engine out without a block and tackle, carry it into your apartment, and mess with it on your kitchen table. You could play around with different engines about as easily as you swap a video card in your computer, playing around with Stirling engines or electrical motors or series hybrid configurations, with the the help of a local machine shop, or with after market kits.
When I was a kid, nearly everybody could do a little work on cars, and everybody at least knew somebody who did fairly major maintenance to their cars, and it was not at all uncommon for people to redesign various aspects of their cars, from boring out their carb jets to monkeying around with their suspension. Today cars are really, really good, and really really reliable. There just isn't much incentive to muck with a $30,000 machine that is pretty damned good already.
But at $2500, it'd be worth doing just for curiosity, not to mention much easier given the small size of the thing.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Hitler wasn't the only one with the idea anyways. Ferdinand Porsche had been working on the VW for years, it was just coincidence that the two wanted to build the same kind of car at around the same time.
Hitler was more of a bankroll for the project than inspiration.
The original VW Beetle, which managed to go all over Germany with 4 lard-ass Germans had a 25 hp engine.
More than 60,000 Windows programs won't run on Linux.
Agreed! I live here in Chennai, and though I hate the fact that this car just means that there'll be much more traffic, this will be much safer than those two wheelers for those people and it'll be nice for all those people who crowd four people onto a motorbike (it's only twice the cost of a reasonably powerful bike). In that way it's nice. I wonder if there'll be an LPG version, I'm sure that'll be hugely popular if it does come because LPG is about twice the mileage per rupee.
Having born in Pakistan, I feel the need to compete somehow.
We have built something cheesier than this.
Check this one out, A four seat vehicle running on 125cc engine.
http://www.tmcpk.com/
"that makes the Nano the first time a 2-cylinder gasoline engine will be used in a car with a single balancer shaft."
I am very curious as to what they mean with this since I am dorking around with analysis on vibrations of such configurations for a living right now.
A single balance axle makes no sense, it only turns the phase of the vibration direction. You are better off without one at all.
Unless the cylinders are vertical, since then the vibrations would be vertical without a balance axle, causing the car to jump on the suspension. One balance axle might phase the vibrations horizontally instead, causing less power loss through viscoelastic dampening.
I am intrigued.
the growth of car ownership in India is going to be one of the worst disasters to hit that country. Just like in China, where car ownership for a billion people is destroying millions of acres of land (roads) and eating up untolds amount of oil. Driver's ed is non-existent, the roads are awful, there are no rules on the road. If you've ever been to India and driven on the roads (and I'm not talking about the insane cities streets) you'll find out very quickly how terrifying that drive can be. Putting a billion more people in cars is not the way to a good future - not for India and not for the rest of the planet. Building a cheap ass car like this will only doom us faster...
I just got back from India last night, spending 2 weeks or so in Mumbai, Maharashtra, and in Colva Beach, Goa. I love India, and have a home in Mumbai on a busy street. My wife joined me for the first time, and she can't wait to go back (she's a very white blond gal).
The traffic SEEMS nuts, but it isn't. It flows and moves with amazing grace, not chaos. Pollution is TERRIBLE, but it isn't just cars and trucks. Once you are familiar with how the roads work, crossing busy streets is easy, and driving isn't too bad. I generally hire a private car for the weeks I spend there each year, but I've driven myself and have little concern for what some people consider a lack of safety standards.
The Tata cars are great. The Nano will be awesome, considering how many families drives 4-to-a-motorcycle in the worst monsoon weather. The biggest polluters, it seems, are the government's buses, which are ancient and kick out more smoke than the next 50 cars combined. The cabs I used were mostly non-gas and non-diesel (I believe LP or something like it, as I videotaped a refill station and heard the sound of high pressure tanks being filled). No smoke came out of the exhausts like the cities' garbage trucks and buses.
I love India with a passion, and am planning on working out of my home there for 2+ months a year. The profit margins are amazing, the lack of regulation leads people to push themselves harder, making people wealthy for working hard. I see smiles on even the poorest laborers' faces. I interviewed one young man who pushed a two-wheel 1 ton moving "cart" with some brothers. He made around $1.50 per day, and he said it was the most money anyone in his family made. I asked him what he did with the money, and he said he SAVED IT so he could start a business. He lived with 9 others in his extended family, and had to deal with a 1 hour train ride in each direction just to push a 1 ton cart around by hand.
I spoke with kids working in the Americanized starbucks-style coffee house. These guys made $3 a day, and they were considered wealthy by friends. We interviewed a film crew at the Bollywood area, and many of them worked more than 70 hours a week, but were able to save more than 50% of their meager salaries.
Food was excellent. Service was amazing. The level of cleanliness in even the public airport has grown by leaps and bounds in just 2 years. I visit every winter (Chicago winter), and just can't believe how happy the poor and lower class seem with all the options available to work.
Tata will destroy the American car companies because they are producing what the market wants, not what government requires. Yes, the Nano may see unsafe, but the 10 accidents I witnessed in Mumbai were all related to the same problem: bad, potholed roads. That's not a carmaker's problem. On the road my home is on (Napean Sea Road in a ritzy district), the road outside my house is maintained by our family and the neighbors. THe main part of the road is fixed slowly and politically, but we make sure that the curbside area is maintained perfectly. The bank down the street from my house had 10 laborers using pick-axes to redo the road, and within 10 days it was good as new.
India, backwards in many ways, but sometimes moving forwards means not understanding how humans work. We want opportunities, and when we find them, we utilize them to better our lives. It's when government gets in the way that people get sad, burdened with debt, and see no hope for the future.
It was VERY hard to come home. We spent 5 days in Paris total on the trip (going and coming), and 3 days in Dubai. It is very sad when returning to the US brings back the views of people with frowns and anger. When my pro-socialist friends tell me maybe I should move away if I hate the American nationalist-socialist system, now I have a good response: maybe I will.
Suggestions for version 2.0:
1) Make it 90% electric and 10% biofuel. I only do not say 100% because in India, even in the most modern cities, power goes out like once every couple of weeks or more.
2) Make a 100% electric one and sell it in China!
If this is done successful (millions sold) in these 2 countries, we may be able to overcome a major environmental hurdle & TATA should deserve a Nobel for that.
3) Get the government to subsidize this thing big time. Bring the price down to 0.25 lahks (~$750) and you will see major adoption. $2500 still WAY too expensive in India
4) Make 100% of parts recyclable & provide locations to do this in major urban cities. That said, Indians are pretty good at using something until it is completely broken and unrepairable. Nearly all buses in Mumbai look like they are from pre-world war II !
5) Make a door-less version & 100% electrical with "wind-up option" (in case electricity fails in city), and force by law diesel rickshaws to use this instead. Polution in cities will be cut back by 90% if you do this!
6) Make the horn 50% less loud (at least!). You almost need earplugs to drive around Indian cities.
7) Make damn well sure it is waterproof; as in, it can be submerssed in 4 feet of water (monsoon seasons) and not leak inside.
Adeptus
No trees were killed in the making of this post; however, many trillions of electrons were horribly inconvenienced.
Talk about your double standards. Everyone in your city is going from 50% to 100% in excess of the speed limit but if the cops give any of them a ticket it's a 'revenue generation stakeout'?
I'd like to see vehicular manslaughter used more in trials when people are speeding, cause an accident and someone gets killed. I'd especially like to see it if the victim is not breaking the speed limit or as we call it in my city, the law.
If the Smart Car is a commercial failure, I'd love to fail like them. Fail all the way to the bank!
There are LOADS of Smart Cars around here. It's one of the more popular superminis. But then again, here is Rightpondia, where small cars traditionally sell very well anyway.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Yeah, that pricing is about right. Trouble is, it's still a terrible value proposition. The gas version, which is the only one that'll get sold in the States, gets maybe 40 MPG highway and runs on premium. For about $3k less, you can get a Chevy Aveo, Toyota Yaris, Honda Fit, or a Kia Rio, all of which are twice the car of the Smart, get nearly the same mileage (35ish, usually), can all seat four, and can actually get on to a freeway without killing themselves or their occupants. About the only way the Smart makes sense is if you're really into tight parking spaces, but, outside of a few densely urban areas (New York?), that's really not much of an issue here.
If the Smart sold for about $4-5k less, it'd make some sense. At its current price point... not so much.
Just like the apocryphal story of the Chevy "Nova" not selling in Latin America because "no va" means "won't go", the name "Tata Nano" won't fly in (french) Canada, because both "Tata" and "Nono" (yes, it's an "o") mean "moron", "stupid" or "idiot" in french-canadian slang...
I'm in Vegas and use a motorcycle exclusively all year. I also rode all year when I lived in Southern California and Arizona.
And although my current motorcycle was $9000, I've owned 2 other great bikes over the past 10 years -- one was $300 ('83 Honda Rebel, lasted me 4 years and is still running well; I sold it to my cousin), the other was $1000 and was great for 5 years (but an accident killed it).