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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.
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.
... 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!
And affordable is that to the people of India?
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.
I heard Hitler liked breakfast, too.
More Twoson than Cupertino
...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.
Yes, but the mentality of a motorcycle driver is somewhat different from the the mentality of a car driver.
A motorcycle driver *knows* that he will very likely die if he crashes at high speed. Car drivers typically don't tend to exercise the same amount of caution.
Likewise, the handling and braking on a $2500 car can't be all that good. Pedestrian injuries seem extremely likely.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
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."
On the upside small cars like the smart car(search youtube for the smart car road test hitting a brick wall at high speed with no cabin intrusion) are made to withstand accidents exceedingly well, while SUVs are not. Anyone who's seen an SUV/compact car accident can tell you that the compact car usually looks completely destroyed, but the cabin looks intact, while the SUV is upside down with its roof collapsed in a ditch.
The lack of maneuverability in SUVs and Trucks combined with their top heaviness, often makes what should have been a simple physics equation (heaviest guy wins) devolve into complete randomness. And unfortunately weight is not a predictor of safety once you're airborne.
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.
If you do some background reading (on your iMac, doubtless) one of the goals of this car is to provide an affordable (economically and environmentally) way of getting Indians off of motorbikes and spit-and-construction paper trikes into something that does at least have a crumple zone. Wait - you do live in India, right?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
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.
Actually usually you'd measure it as 4.4 L/100km.
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.
The German word for "hello" is "Echsteinlefahrtengruber." The German translation for "Hey Hans, what say tomorrow morning we climb into our tanks and roll over Poland?" is "Hans, Poland, ja?"
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
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.
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
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.