$2500 Tata Nano Car Unveiled in India 625
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."
Re:Somewhere (Score:2, Interesting)
Good Business Oppurtunity (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd buy one, too. (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Somewhere (Score:2, Interesting)
That's why it took the SMART almost 8 years to get into the USA. And after "Americanizing" it to make it "safe" (you Canadians and Europeans with your death traps!) it is no longer an affordable car but a expensive curiosity. The Smart can be purchased starting at $18,000 but mostly priced around $24,000 because the only model available is the luxury model. Yes I know this as I talked to the guys out at ZAP! for the past 5 years trying to get one, and now the local dealer that has 4 on the lot and has them priced even higher than the MSRP.
This car will never be allowed in the USA, you will hear "experts" claim how incredibly unsafe it is, and probably some claiming how bad it pollutes.
Re:Somewhere (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Good Business Oppurtunity (Score:1, Interesting)
9000mpg, zero emissions other than slightly elevated C02 levels and water vapor. Plus instead of being fat and lazy it makes you lean and fit.
and before you say anything, Yes I have ridden one. a 10 mile commute in the winter (3 inches of snow on the ground) is very doable. the streamlining makes it really easy to pedal and you can easily maintain 10mph in it. close all the vents and treat the canopy with "never fog" and you actually will take off your jacket because it's so warm.
Oh and those of you claiming you will get killed, ran over, nobody will see you... Really? in bright yellow cars give you a HUGE safe distance when they pass. It's way safer and practical than a bike.
Oh and it made me lose nearly 100 pounds.
Wish it were available here (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:the VW idea lives on... (Score:4, Interesting)
Hitler was more of a bankroll for the project than inspiration.
Re:Somewhere (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Somewhere (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Missing the point again (Score:1, Interesting)
We have built something cheesier than this.
Check this one out, A four seat vehicle running on 125cc engine.
http://www.tmcpk.com/ [tmcpk.com]
What engine is this Bosch thing? (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:I'd buy one, too. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I'd buy one, too. (Score:1, Interesting)
Disaster for India (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Somewhere (Score:2, Interesting)
The traffic SEEMS nuts, but it isn't. It flows and moves with amazing grace, not chaos. Pollution is TERRIBLE, but it isn't just cars and trucks. Once you are familiar with how the roads work, crossing busy streets is easy, and driving isn't too bad. I generally hire a private car for the weeks I spend there each year, but I've driven myself and have little concern for what some people consider a lack of safety standards.
The Tata cars are great. The Nano will be awesome, considering how many families drives 4-to-a-motorcycle in the worst monsoon weather. The biggest polluters, it seems, are the government's buses, which are ancient and kick out more smoke than the next 50 cars combined. The cabs I used were mostly non-gas and non-diesel (I believe LP or something like it, as I videotaped a refill station and heard the sound of high pressure tanks being filled). No smoke came out of the exhausts like the cities' garbage trucks and buses.
I love India with a passion, and am planning on working out of my home there for 2+ months a year. The profit margins are amazing, the lack of regulation leads people to push themselves harder, making people wealthy for working hard. I see smiles on even the poorest laborers' faces. I interviewed one young man who pushed a two-wheel 1 ton moving "cart" with some brothers. He made around $1.50 per day, and he said it was the most money anyone in his family made. I asked him what he did with the money, and he said he SAVED IT so he could start a business. He lived with 9 others in his extended family, and had to deal with a 1 hour train ride in each direction just to push a 1 ton cart around by hand.
I spoke with kids working in the Americanized starbucks-style coffee house. These guys made $3 a day, and they were considered wealthy by friends. We interviewed a film crew at the Bollywood area, and many of them worked more than 70 hours a week, but were able to save more than 50% of their meager salaries.
Food was excellent. Service was amazing. The level of cleanliness in even the public airport has grown by leaps and bounds in just 2 years. I visit every winter (Chicago winter), and just can't believe how happy the poor and lower class seem with all the options available to work.
Tata will destroy the American car companies because they are producing what the market wants, not what government requires. Yes, the Nano may see unsafe, but the 10 accidents I witnessed in Mumbai were all related to the same problem: bad, potholed roads. That's not a carmaker's problem. On the road my home is on (Napean Sea Road in a ritzy district), the road outside my house is maintained by our family and the neighbors. THe main part of the road is fixed slowly and politically, but we make sure that the curbside area is maintained perfectly. The bank down the street from my house had 10 laborers using pick-axes to redo the road, and within 10 days it was good as new.
India, backwards in many ways, but sometimes moving forwards means not understanding how humans work. We want opportunities, and when we find them, we utilize them to better our lives. It's when government gets in the way that people get sad, burdened with debt, and see no hope for the future.
It was VERY hard to come home. We spent 5 days in Paris total on the trip (going and coming), and 3 days in Dubai. It is very sad when returning to the US brings back the views of people with frowns and anger. When my pro-socialist friends tell me maybe I should move away if I hate the American nationalist-socialist system, now I have a good response: maybe I will.
Suggestions for version 2.0 (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Re:Somewhere (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd like to see vehicular manslaughter used more in trials when people are speeding, cause an accident and someone gets killed. I'd especially like to see it if the victim is not breaking the speed limit or as we call it in my city, the law.
Re:Somewhere (Score:3, Interesting)
There are LOADS of Smart Cars around here. It's one of the more popular superminis. But then again, here is Rightpondia, where small cars traditionally sell very well anyway.
Re:Somewhere (Score:3, Interesting)
If the Smart sold for about $4-5k less, it'd make some sense. At its current price point... not so much.
This won't work in Canada (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I'd buy one, too. (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Motorcycles easily under $2500 (Score:2, Interesting)
And although my current motorcycle was $9000, I've owned 2 other great bikes over the past 10 years -- one was $300 ('83 Honda Rebel, lasted me 4 years and is still running well; I sold it to my cousin), the other was $1000 and was great for 5 years (but an accident killed it).