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$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."
Ralph Nader just fell out of his chair.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Nice to see the VW idea (small affordable car for The People) keeping on. Also nice to see that the low horsepower is there, after all, horsepower is for those who can't keep their speeds up in the corners.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
When I hear the phrase "$2500 tatas", cars isn't the first thing that comes to mind.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
because the Nano's bra is the only one I have any chance of taking off. (No, I don't live in my parents' basement, I am married with young kids. The effect on one's sex life is the same.)
Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
Unbelievable! Especially since the Punto is only 8 times as expensive. You are comparing apples and golden oranges.
Normally you pay extra for a diesel engine, sometimes almost as much as the $2,500 that is the entire cost of this car.
hmmm, thats a mighty small crumple zone that the passengers all sit in.
no thanks, if I wanted a micro city car then I'd get a SMART. at least that has a safety tridon cage around the passengers, and does better mpg. it also performs surprisingly well on the safety test. though on an impact I would put my money on the other car...
... Besides being the largest car company in India according to this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tata_Motors
They are in the process of buying Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080103.wford0103/BNStory/Business
It also owns pieces of Daewoo to boot. They're not a small player. The big three might want to take notice.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
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 found the comments from the Greens very enlightening. Notice the lack of joy for the poor who will now be able to drive. Their comments fall in the "let them eat cake" category.
To be fair, the Greens would prefer that we *all* eat cake and live like the poorest indians (excepting other Green leaders and spokespeople, of course). :)
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Heard about this on NPR and they said the top speed is ~50 miles per hour.
This post climbed Mt. Washington.
It's a two cylinder, four stroke engine. I misread that the first time too. From TFA: powered by a 30 HP Bosch 624 cc four stroke engine mounted out back and mated to a CVT. That makes the Nano the first time a 2-cylinder gasoline engine will be used in a car with a single balancer shaft.
...and it's called diesel. However, we have politicians too stupid to see that diesel powered vehicles can get the gas mileage consumers demand while burning cleaner than gasoline combustion engines can like environmentalists want. Stupid states like California and Massachusetts outright ban these vehicles for new car sales. If diesel is so awful, I saw no evidence of that on a recent trip to Paris where diesel cars are everywhere. Diesel also offers a path to biodiesel through conversion kits which could ultimately smooth the transition to a renewable energy source that a)helps the U.S. economy and b)helps lower carbon emissions dramatically.
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.
"oh my god, I CAN AFFORD THIS!!!" Doesn't seem like it'll ever make it to the States though... doesn't it have to be over a certain size and emit a lot more pollutants into the air?
I'd be the same, but for the families that drive with 4 people on a motor scooter in India this is a vast improvement in safety.
First, to all the Diesel supporters out there (I'm one too, currently driving my fifth one, and I keep them a long time.) The real reason that the US hardly sees European advanced Diesels, and that India can't use them, is that they don't have the refining and distribution capability to make the fuel needed by advanced car Diesels. There is a reason why my car has a 4-valve per cylinder DOHC with common rail and variable vane turbo, and my boat has the same engine with two valves per cylinder and produces one third of the horsepower. The boat will run on heating oil. The car needs low sulfur fuel with plenty of additives.
Second, to all the "this is underpowered, this is dangerous" mob out there. The alternative is either people hanging off a scooter, or a powered tricycle with no safety features whatsoever. This thing is a huge advance. Thirty HP is plenty for India, where acceleration has to take place in the middle of slow moving traffic, and where the motorway speed limit is 60.
Also, you may not have realised that the quoted fuel consumption of cars is on a special test cycle. American cars with their hugely over-horsepowered engines (often using a 2 litre plus engine where the Europeans would use 1300cc, and around 200HP where we would use 100) exceed the EPA consumption as soon as you put your foot down, yet most of the power can never be legally used for more than a few seconds. A limited capacity, limited power engine will in reality get better MPG simply because you cannot use it to waste fuel in rapid acceleration followed by heavy braking.
It seems to me that what this demonstrates is that Indians are capable of thinking about what works for their society, which is their huge advantage over most of the Third World.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
And given that the vast majority of driving that the vast majority of people seem to do is driving alone or with a single passenger in the car... it makes a lot more sense to move to motorcycles. They are also smaller, can park 3 in a normal parking space, can even carry your groceries home....
I think it makes a lot of sense for me to have a motorcycle for the warm months, and a car for when I need to carry larger items, more passengers, or there is snow on the ground. I have yet to find a need for a car bigger than my jetta.
Honestly, I think its disgusting that people drive around using SUVs, Minivans, and four by fours as their normal commuting vehicle when 90% of the time its just them.
Such a waste. Not to mention road hazard. Those vehicles do far more damage to anything they hit than a motorcycle or smaller car. They are a menace to everyone around them.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
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.
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54 miles per gallon = 22.9577601 kilometers per liter
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I don't want more poor people driving. Or more rich people.
I would prefer it if MUCH fewer people needed to drive in the first place.
As I write this, I'm living in one American suburb, working in another, and am forced to burn fossil fuels just to buy a gallon of milk at the nearest store. I'm dependent on liquified dinosaurs. Walking to said shop from my house would probably only take 15 minutes tops, if a safe footpath existed. (I don't consider a freeway overpass without a pedestrain walkway to be adequate, thank you.) But no-o-o-o, my country decided to build communities around a single point of failure, the availability of cheap hydrocarbons.
The only reason why the new Tata may be a positive development for us in the West is if its energy-saving techniques actually make it to our markets. Otherwise, it's just another case of the inefficient, resource-hungry American lifestyle being appropriated overseas -- and in case you're wondering, no, that is not good news for this planet.
"Hatred" my ass. Read the sig if you need further clues.
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
hit an object that doesn't crumple in a SMART car and the results will not be pretty.
The key thing I remember from talking to a SMART distributor was how well it fared in accidents with OTHER cars. When some of us asked about fixed objects they kept going back to car versus car.
A car with such a limited crumple zone as the SMART is going to transmit more energy to the occupants upon impact, there simply isn't enough car there to do anything.
Besides the car was woefully underpowered requiring near lead footing to use on the highway... meaning shitty mileage for something that weighs in at 1800lbs
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Because one of the little dirty secrets of the Clean Air act was to exclude about everyone other than passenger cars from the rules. They specifically excluded diesel from the rules as the manufacturers were claiming small number of vehicles, poor farmers, and limited impact. Most likely a front for the oil industry.
Does Sweet Crude ring a bell? Specifically named for lack of sulfur which was the major contaminate in diesel.
The oil industry had the chance to make diesel the fuel of the future but their bean counters got in the way. They have known for ages (since McKinley's time) how to remove sulfur from the fuel BUT THEY DID NOT WANT TO. they did it for speciality uses (kerosene lamps so they would not catch fire or stink) but not vehicles. As such states like California went after them, specifically because nearly a dozen of the contaminents in heavy sulfur diesel fuel are carcinogens. Worse studies showed that air in diesel school buses was worse than the air around them!
Diesel had a futre but the industry got greedy and now will pay for it. Its not going to be until 2010 that we have mandatory clean diesels. Hell the current ones put out contaminents that hard catalytic converters.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
All I hear is discussion about how much this car lacks and how much better all other cars are.
Is anyone going to look at the price and say "Wow finally I could afford this car!" Or are we all spoiled to a point where price does not matter? I think that price is the greatest achivement of this car company.
Imagine getting a loan for the cheapest new car that currently exists and paying it off for next 3-5 years. This car is cheaper than almost any motorcycle you could possibly buy. I could buy it with my petty cash and use it for every day commute to work and I bet insurance for this car would be next to nothing as it's only worth $2.5K to have whole car replaced.
Other car companies should be very afraid. One thing we can expect to come in next few years thanks to this car (if it ever reaches North America due to politic involved selling such a cheap car) - cheap, fuel efficient cars for everyone!
If this car was introduces to North America there would be huge implications on every aspect of our society starting from public transit (not being cost effective way of travel anymore) to lack of roads (due to number of these cars being on the roads), to people traveling greater distances to work (low cost suburban living and low cost of transportation), to mayor North American automakers and massive layoffs to come, including sky rocketing gas prices (increasing MPG but increasing numbers of cars on road - high gasoline demand)... etc.
I somehow doubt that this car will ever get close to North American shores. Or if it does it's starting cost will be $10K which does not make it worth anymore.
"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...
Stubear,
There used to be big differences between diesel sold in the US and diesel sold in Europe. US diesel was until last year(?) much dirtier, lots of sulfur, etc.
With the changes to diesel fuel in the past year, it's now just a new matter of getting states to accept the European diesels. Beware though, that most auto emissions standards also include specific technology requirements that the European diesel motor makers just don't feel are necessary.
If you don't want "butt jewelry" as they call it, finding something under $2500 should be easy. Of course if you can only ride it half the year, it's probably not worth the extra cost of insurance, titling, and capital other than for sake of entertainment.
Well, of course...
:-)
When a car with 30hp clashes with one with 150, who do you guess is gonna win?
I know hitpoints aren't everything, but I fear the nano hasn't got much of a chance there
One critical hit would be enough to kill it.
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.
If I mention Stalin, do I get a cookie?
Seriously people, mentioning Hitler in a factual statement does not invoke Godwin's Law. This is not a comparison, it's a statement. A fact (which should be checked for truth, of course) is not the same as comparing someone to Hitler because he doesn't agree with you.
Your BMW is a diesel, which is not comparable because it uses higher compression on a more energy-dense fuel, and is thus inherently more efficient. Instead, realize that everybody is comparing to a gasoline car, and thinks it's impressive because they're used to 30 mpg or less.
Of course, the real reason it's not impressive is that even non-hybrid gasoline cars, such as the Honda CRX HF and 3-cylinder Geo Metro, were capable of getting fuel economy in the 50 mpg range 15 years ago or so, and did it with more horsepower.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Reminds me of the Polish Fiat 126p. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_126
To everyone who thinks the Tata Nano is underpowered, that car had 24hp, and was capable of hauling 4 people. It wasn't comfortable, but it worked. It climbed mountains (I was personally in one of those as it climbed to some small village in the Alps). And it consumed very little fuel - around 40 gpm, I think. And since nobody was comparing it to huge western cars, it was just fine. Read the link.
I think this car will be the bomb, and will be imitated by other car manufacturers in India.
m
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...
Guys, I'm from India and the reason the car is making headlines is cos its cost is estimated to be around Rs 1 lakh (1lakh=100,000). Right now, the cheapest car(Maruti 800) costs around 2 lakhs I believe. The car has not gone into the production phase yet, but a hella lot of people are waiting eagerly for it.
"Do not confuse the unusual with the impossible" - Psmith
I have a VAZ-11113 "Oka" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lada_Oka ) and its 32 hp engine is ok for driving in Moscow and around. It accelerates easily up to 110 km/h and it's possible to achieve 130 km/h on the good road (but kinda scary above 110-120). Once I got four passengers and we rode for about 200km and it wasn't that different from driving alone, it was just a little slower to accelerate... And it's very cheap to maintain.