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."
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!
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.
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.
That link isn't a scientific study, and should not be used as the foundation for broad generalizations. Furthermore, it doesn't even support your assertion. It does say that the median age of riders has risen significantly, but does not discuss the relative rates of accidents among younger and older groups.
;)
The fact is that the best data available today still comes from the Hurt Report (rimary author, Dr. Harry Hurt), even though the study was written in 1981. Just in the last couple of months, the federal government and the AMA have jointly funded a new study intended to update those conclusions.
The summary of the Hurt Report can be found online, but I think that a couple of these conclusions are relevant here:
22. The motorcycle riders involved in accidents are essentially without training; 92% were self-taught or learned from family or friends. Motorcycle rider training experience reduces accident involvement and is related to reduced injuries in the event of accidents.
19. Motorcycle riders between the ages of 16 and 24 are significantly overrepresented in accidents; motorcycle riders between the ages of 30 and 50 are significantly underrepresented. Although the majority of the accident-involved motorcycle riders are male (96%), the female motorcycles riders are significantly overrepresented in the accident data.
23. More than half of the accident-involved motorcycle riders had less than 5 months experience on the accident motorcycle, although the total street riding experience was almost 3 years. Motorcycle riders with dirt bike experience are significantly underrepresented in the accident data.
32. Motorcycles equipped with fairings and windshields are underrepresented in accidents, most likely because of the contribution to conspicuity and the association with more experienced and trained riders.
19 and 32, especially, point to the conclusion that the "older guy on a Harley" is most definitely not more likely to suffer an accident. Younger riders are much more likely to be involved in accidents, as are less experienced riders of any age.
With that said, the thing that I think is most important is founded on these two conclusions:
1. Approximately three-fourths of these motorcycle accidents involved collision with another vehicle, which was most usually a passenger automobile.
6. In the multiple vehicle accidents, the driver of the other vehicle violated the motorcycle right-of-way and caused the accident in two-thirds of those accidents.
According to the Hurt Report, 50% of all motorcycle accidents are caused by another driver violating the motorcycle's right-of-way. More experienced and better educated riders know this. They know that their age and experience will not remove the threat that they face from other drivers on the road, which is the single biggest threat to their safety. They can only mitigate that threat by constant guard against those violations at the places that they are most likely, and development of countersteering, swerving, and braking skills.
I am a motorcyclist.
Probably a young one.