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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."
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 heard Hitler liked breakfast, too.
More Twoson than Cupertino
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."
No. I doubt that the 30 HP engine could climb some of the hills and mountains we have here in Vermont.
Also, lets be real. How effective is a 30HP car going to be moving a family of fatass American families weighing in at ~1000lbs total.
I have seen the roads in India, specifically Chennai and Mumbai, and cars like this can improve safety. I saw many little 150cc motorcycles with 3, 4, even 5 people on them tooling around. Many of the bikes with only two people had a woman on the back with a sari, just waiting to get caught in the rear wheel. In fact, one of the accessories for Indian motorcycles is a sari guard, designed just for this purpose.
These new cars are probably a lot safe than the auto-rickshaws running everywhere also.
$2,500 may not seem much to a USA citizen, but it is a huge mount to many Indians. Motorycles are in the $700 range, so this is a 400-500 percent increase when factoring in taxes, etc. New USA motorcycles above 650cc are in the $5,000 and up range, new cars are only about 2.5 to 3 times more expensive.
I applaud Tata motors for bringing to India an automobile that addresses safety and pollution concerns. Would I buy one?? If I could commute completely on city streets, which I can, then yes. You can't buy a used motorcycle of any size in the US for $2,500. Right now, I ride my motorcycle to work as often as I can (probably at least 4 out of 5 days), but even in Phoenix it rains sometimes. For those days, I have to depend on a truck that gets 20 mpg. What a waste for one person, I would rather look into one of these.
And don't tell me about SmartCars. They cost over $20K. I'm not spending that for a car I would use 10 or 15 times a year.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
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.
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.
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.
Ah, but you dont take the inflation and exchange rates into account ! A modern american lard-ass works out to be roughly 4.67 units of the original VW Beetle era german lard-asses.
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