World's Cheapest Car Goes On Sale In India 571
Frankie70 writes "The Tata Nano — the car that caught the world's imagination as the cheapest ever — will finally be rolled out commercially on Monday in Mumbai in a mega event organised by Tata Motors. Ben Oliver, contributing editor, Car Magazine, London test drove the car in December, 08. These were his first impressions. This was his verdict: 'CAR's first ride in the Tata Nano felt far more significant and exciting than a first drive in a Ferrari or Lamborghini, because this car's importance is immeasurably greater. It won't compete on dynamics or quality with European or Japanese city cars, but it doesn't have to. What Tata has achieved at an unprecedented price is astonishing, although we'd guess it will cost Indian consumers closer to £1700 when it finally goes on sale, six months late, in March 2009.'"
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)
Cheap car already tried and failed! (Score:5, Interesting)
Those of us old enough to remember the 1980s remember the Yugo [wikipedia.org], which was touted then as the cheapest car ever: $3990 when they debuted in the U.S. in 1987 (bear in mind that the U.S. has much tougher safety and emissions standards than India).
It was tried here and failed miserably, especially after the general consensus among the consumer rags, especially Consumer Reports, was that you were better of with a used car than a new Yugo.
Safety.... (Score:3, Interesting)
So basically it's "safe enough for India" but you couldn't sell it as-is anywhere that has vehicle safety standards.
Of course, you probably couldn't sell a Geo Metro or a Honda CRX (two 1980's high mileage cars) as a new car in the US today either for the same reasons.
I'm not convinced that changing the vehicular population makeup of India from bicycles and scooters to have a higher volume of these actually raises the overall safety of the traveling population - and it surely doesn't improve the fuel economy.
For those of us who are used to dollars, according to Google, the base price of 1700 pounds in the article is about $2500.
Oh, Joy, Joy, more oil comsumers (Score:1, Interesting)
Great, a more affordable vehicle hits the roads so that more people can increase their carbon footprints and increase oil consumption. A few gas guzzlers or many more efficient vehicles. The result's the same.
Re:Cheap car already tried and failed! (Score:5, Interesting)
A lot of the Yugo failure was quality.
I was in the auto repair business through much of the 90's and we never saw one, despite a pretty decent number of them being sold locally. I don't think they made it out of the 80's still running.
One of my store managers had been working at an import auto parts store while the Yugo was on sale as a new car.
I recall him saying that the Yugo dealer bought a lot of starters from them - for new cars before they sold them. Fortunately for the dealer, a new Yugo was mostly just a old Fiat.
Try to get your mind around that total lack of quality - the dealer replacing an OEM, brand new, factory part with an aftermarket part to get one that would work.
Wow, talk about crappy.
Infrastructure will not handle this (Score:5, Interesting)
I think Indian infrastructure is going to have a hard time coping with this.
Tried getting anywhere in New Delhi recently? A 10km ride can take HOURS. I'm not exaggerating or kidding. You will literally stand in one spot for half an hour. Nobody obeys traffic rules and gridlock is the norm.
The Indian middle class is looking to copy the west, and they want their SUVs and their tall lattes too.
In late afternoon in New Delhi (about 6:00pm or so), you can STARE AT THE SUN without feeling any queasiness in your eyes. That's how bad the pollution is.
Instead of looking to other cultures and trying to NOT make the same mistakes, India is eager to copycat them. Heh... you think Americans go a little bit overboard with the bling and the super-size-me? Just wait.. just wait.
-Laxitive
shopping cart, anyone? (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously, look at it. 12" wheels, and how tall and narrow it is!
But looking at what it's designed for, it appears to be very well thought-out. Anyone that's driven in europe can understand why you need a narrow car because of the streets. And anything that gets your side mirror another half inch away from oncoming traffic's mirrors is a good thing, and then of course there's parking. (no mention of how well it turns to squeeze into a tight spot?) For an in-town car in a big city, it looks to be ideally suited. 60mpg? Heck I could use that right now.
It said it accomodates "six footers". I'm 6'2, I wonder if I'll be cracking my head on the roof?
Considering the next-to-nonexistent trunk, it's NOT a family trip car, unless you're a family of two. The back seat really IS the trunk, and the trunk is the glovebox.
But I wouldn't mind trying one. I wonder what it's top speed is, they only tested it to 60mph and it took 17 sec to get there, i wonder if it can do 70? I have to take an interstate to work here and it's 70 in places.
I'd also be interested to know its range. At 60mpg though, I wonder what speed that's at? Most larger cars, that's measured at highway speed (55?) and is lower for in-town. This car is targeted almost exclusively for in-town so that's not the number I want to hear. It's not a hybrid so it lacks the regenerative breaking bonus for in-town driving. (unless the thing's got a flywheel? heh) I'm picturing it getting more like 40mph in-town, and guessing at a 5gal tank, so that'd be about a 200 mile in-town range, which I could certainly live with. My exploder gets 300 miles on the highway, 240 in town. It'd shave 70% off my total at the pump too which would be wonderful.
The review was ok but missed a lot, I'd like to have seen 7 pages, not 2. Airbags I hope? looks to be manual only. (can you smell my clutch yet?) And it doesn't look like they let him drive it, which worries me a little.
Re:And will be unavailable anyplace else.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Why not spend that money on decent public transportation? just because USA snobs poo-poo riding a bus or train does not mean the rest of the planet has that stick firmly planted in their rear ends as well...
The public transportation systems in many places need upgrading. Sounds like a better way to spend money than to enable more cars on the road. India already has a traffic nightmare in all it's major cities.. In Chennai, it's near suicide to step off the curb or to be in a car on those roads... How will this car help that?
Yes I'm a US citizen that has actually left his country and went to other places. Traffic in India is INSANE (France is even more insane!) and I cant see this car helping.
Re:And will be unavailable anyplace else.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Which country would that be? Germany with BMW, Mercedes and Audi? Or rather a scandinacian one? Volvo comes to mind. And what about all the Japanese SUVs?
Meanwhile, my 99 Century Buick V6 needs less gas than a Mitsubishi Galant V6 from approximately the same year.
So what the hell is your point?
Yeah, and where are all the SUVs from those foreign car companies sold? You don't think Toyota started making SUVs to take advantage of the lucrative large-truck-in-Tokyo market, do you?
Oh sure they do sell in other markets, but the point is that nobody has latched onto the gas-guzzling needlessly-oversized truck and SUV like in America. And therefore nobody from there, including those driving Century Buicks, should be pointing fingers at Indians buying the cheapest car ever and saying "Hey you shouldn't do that!"
Re:And will be unavailable anyplace else.... (Score:1, Interesting)
I live in the United States. I willfully do not own a car. I carpool 20 miles every day (both ways).
It would be trivial for me to take money out of my bank account and buy a used car. I think I have firm moral ground to make commentary about vehicle usage around the world. I choose not to, though.
It's just as unfair of you to paint 300 million people with such a wide paintbrush as it is for the GGP to do the same to people in India.
Re:Infrastructure will not handle this (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not sure what the plan is now, but when the Nano was first unveiled Ratan Tata (the CEO) said that they would be focusing on selling the car in smaller cities.
The larger cities like Delhi and Mumbai have good public transport systems, and most people are pragmatic enough to realize that a train will get them to work faster (and cheaper) than driving in a car. I worked in Mumbai for two years, and I was earning more than enough money to own a regular car (and pay a driver!) but I still used public transport on a daily basis. The same is true for almost all of my peers.
I don't think there will be too many people buying this thing as a status symbol. I see it being primarily bought by lower-to-middle income families in the smaller cities, or in villages which are well connected to neighboring cities. If you ever visited India, you'd see some of these people taking their whole family on a single motorcycle which is dangerous.
Unthinking racism (Score:4, Interesting)
Someone also mocks the Ferrari/Lamborghini comparison. Wrong. To an engineer - that's a real, chartered engineer, not just a jumped up mechanic - Ferraris and Lamborghinis are not very interesting. An example. Evolutionary biologists point out that horses are interesting, not because they are a successful design, but because they are a bit of a failed one. Very few of the world's species are horse based, whereas the beetle design, the bat design, and even the primate design have been wildly successful. (Or look at the dog design, which has proved amazingly flexible, scaling well to a wide range of sizes.) In the same way, few people are motivated to buy Ferraris, whereas the European small hatchback design has proven wildly successful and is the basis of most of the cars on the world's roads, scaling all the way from the Smart car to the "people carrier". The Tata design is interesting because it is likely to be the precursor of what most of the world's drivers are using in 20 years time.
Re:And will be unavailable anyplace else.... (Score:2, Interesting)
1) car insurance is compulsory in India, covers the car, not the driver. Takes care of damages to the car as well as to the victims. ....thus spoke the western overlord..go back to your bullock cart...you deserve not what you hath not?
2) Safety standards exist, albeit for the typical India roads where the speed limits rarely exceed 50 km/hr [convert this to m/hr yourself , please].
3) Nano is compliant with Euro 4, the present European emission standards.
4) Gross mis-information, smacks of ignorance at best and racism at worst.
5)
and well the price of petrol [gasoline] has been hovering around the $4/gallon mark for last 4 years in India.
Re:Oh, Joy, Joy, more oil comsumers (Score:5, Interesting)
I understand the point you are intending, but consider whether your bashing 300,000,000 people with such a broad bat isn't the moral equivalent of those who "talk down" to the developing world.
Re:And will be unavailable anyplace else.... (Score:1, Interesting)
That's a good idea, but I'm afraid it's rather too little too late. We're going to have to prepare ourselves for a severe cut in our standards of living.
Back in 1976 I took an economics class that had three professors, all of whom were about as smart as a house cat. These bozos were trying to say that the US was going to have to lower its standard of living, too, just like you are now.
I'd just gotten back from Thailand a couple of years earlier when I had been in the USAF, and at the time it was a 3rd world couuntry. No paved roads, no electricity, no natural gas; very little infrastructure.
But I had rented a bungalow for $35 a month. I could feed myself and three Thai hookers at a nice restaraunt for a dollar, and get change back. A taxi ride to the base was a dollar, a bhat bus ride cost a nickle. Twenty sticks of fine Thail bud was four dollars.
You can't compere the economy of a 3rd world country to a 1st world country. You hear "they can live on a thousand dollars a year, why can't you?" like I heard from the idiot economists teaching that class, but they can't see that if prices were a 50th as high as ours, we could live on a 50th of the paycheck.
I called them idiots, marched out of the class (with half the other students following me), went straight to enrollment and cancelled that class. History has shown those economic "experts" wrong, and me right.
History always shows economists wrong. I have no idea why anyone would listen to ANYTHING an economist would say.
Ronald Reagan used to say "a high tide lifts all boats," but if the boat is moored with a short rope the high tide will sink it.
Pollution in India (Score:3, Interesting)
Fuel consumption will be around 60mpg, and emissions around 100g/km;
I've been to India, and big cities like Delhi are so polluted it smells like you have your mouth around the back of a Mack truck. I went for a wedding, and the groom had to wear a face mask because his lungs couldn't handle it. Our flight out of Rajasthan was delayed because of "fog" - but this is desert. By "fog" they meant low-lying pollution.
I'm not sure if this will lead to more cars in India: But this car is much cleaner than the 20+ year old dilapidated taxis that are mainstream in india now. Those things blow visible smoke out of the back, so this might actually help the pollution problem.
Re:Unthinking racism (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps just as demeaning, but not founded in the mistaken belief that whites are inherently better than others.
Re:And will be unavailable anyplace else.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Just because it is the path that America went down doesn't mean that it is the best path for other nations to follow.
Yes, and if India decides that they should follow a different path, then more power to them.
I think that the argument against giving them gas-powered cars is valid.
We aren't giving them anything, and thus it is not our choice to not give them. We are not the Greek gods, and Tata Motors is not Prometheus, okay?
It's the whole attitude here that pisses me off. I'd have no problem if people were saying "Hey India, look at what heavy adoption of cars at the expense of public transportation did to our country. You might want to think before making the same mistake we did." Instead, all I hear is this air of superior judgement, all "India shouldn't be given cars because they're going to fuck up the environment". It's the combination of the hypocrisy of ignoring or downplaying our own effect as polluter, with the sense of superiority where of course nobody can tell us what to do but we can decide whether India should be allowed to have cars that just reeks of hypocrisy and arrogance.
India already has the gift of fire-in-a-cylinder-with-a-piston. That djinni has been out of the bottle for a long time. And I don't see much to complain about with this particular incarnation. Compared to the fuel economy and emissions of the top gas and hybrid cars, it's competitive on fuel economy and emissions. Compared to the average car in the North American fleet, it's very good. Compared to the two-stroke engines running scooters and auto-rickshaws in the cities of India already, and which the Nano is priced to compete against, it is insanely great on emissions.
I think that India would be a perfect market for electric cars. I think that India would be a perfect market for electric cars. Electric cars are not big in America because the average American's commute exceeds the range and speed requirements for the average electric car currently in production.
Except an electric with enough juice for even a short commute is going to cost a hell of a lot more than the Nano. Yes, ICEs are not the ideal solution going forward. In the meantime, electrics serve some few needs, and hopefully will serve more in the future. In the meantime, if they want to improve their standard of living in a way that will be both affordable and get them halfway across the city and back or to the next town and back, and which will actually reduce emissions when it replaces the currently highly emissive vehicles that clog New Delhi, then who are you or I to say no? It's not like we're setting a better example, now are we? There's nothing wrong with discussing the issues, there is something wrong with riding a high horse while doing so.
Re:I'm still waiting for the Tata Touch... (Score:5, Interesting)
Pollution: [...] the contamination of the environment by harmful substances.
Yup, sounds like CO_2 qualifies. In spades. Sure it's a whole new mechanism for damage--not toxic, not carcinogenic, not a quick dose of nutrients to previously clear water, not ugly, etc--but it's certainly harmful!
Looks like the USA's per capita emissions of CO_2 are on the order of 10 times higher than China's (source: quick amalgam of Google results).
Some sources say that the USA leads in other pollutants as well (see http://www.crystalinks.com/pollution.html [crystalinks.com] for a start, but I'm not happy with that page's rigour). That's no surprise given that the USA is a world leader in consumption and disposal of all kinds of goods--sheer volume overcomes good intentions. OTOH, I hear China is investing heavily in coal-fired power plants, which besides helping them to pull ahead in CO_2 will add a nice dose of mercury and some other nasties. Go team! There are lots of causes of pollution, and the USA comes out ahead on many of them.
Of course, the USA isn't doing too badly (relatively speaking) at controlling pollutants, although we're not doing especially well, either. Far better than China or India, AFAIK, although I'm not happy that my country is "better than the worst"!
This is an area I know little about. Do you have a better reference than what I found?
Re:And will be unavailable anyplace else.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Back in 1976 I took an economics class that had three professors, all of whom were about as smart as a house cat. These bozos were trying to say that the US was going to have to lower its standard of living, too, just like you are now.
That's odd, because most economists predict continual upward global economic growth (with the occasional brief hiccup). You must have had some socialist economics professors. After the fall of the USSR, the ideas of Freidman, Hayek, and Mises became more popular.
Re:And will be unavailable anyplace else.... (Score:3, Interesting)
The thing is, it has to be one of the following:
- Cars don't improve the standards of living (in which case, WTF are you doing arguing about this?)
- Worldwide supply of oil is perfectly stable (and I've got a bridge to sell you...)
- Salaries in the US and other, car-dependant nations will rise at least as much as the price of oil does. (The bridge is still on sale...)
- The US *will* have to reduce its standard of living.
You hear "they can live on a thousand dollars a year, why can't you?" like I heard from the idiot economists teaching that class, but they can't see that if prices were a 50th as high as ours, we could live on a 50th of the paycheck.
Y'know, maybe that was his point. That both prices and salaries should be lowered to "third world" standards, so that currency is a bit more standardized at a global level to diminish the inequalities you pointed out. I'm not an economist so dunno if that'd be a sustainable position, but in my experience 99% of the time when a student calls a professor an idiot, its because the student didn't even understand what the professor was saying, let alone his reasons to do so.