Posted on 06/19/2008 1:35:34 PM PDT by CarrotAndStick
MUMBAI: Shweta Kumari is waiting impatiently for the new Nano by Tata Motors to hit car showrooms here later this year.
With a price tag of about $2,500, the Nano will cost about half the price of the least-expensive car on the market, easily affordable for Kumari, who works as a software developer.
"I can drop my kid at school, go to work and go shopping more comfortably," said Kumari, who now shares a car with her husband.
But some environmentalists are dreading the prospect of hundreds of thousands of low-cost cars hitting polluted and overcrowded roads around the world in the next few years.
"In the current policy and regulatory framework, the low-cost cars will be disastrous," said Anumita Roychowdhury, associate director of the Center for Science and Environment in New Delhi.
Carmakers, warily eyeing sliding sales in developed markets like the United States and Europe, disagree.
They argue that the small, fuel-efficient vehicles are a greener option than gas-guzzling SUVs and larger cars as oil hovers above $135 a barrel and as consumers in emerging economies like China, India and Russia get behind the wheel in ever-increasing numbers.
Tata, which introduced the Nano to a rousing reception in January, says its car, the world's least expensive, meets the strictest environmental criteria, and its lean design delivers high fuel efficiency of about 20 kilometers a liter, or 47 miles a gallon, of gasoline.
The car, with a dealer price of 100,000 rupees, or $2,330, will have tailpipe emissions well within Indian requirements. It is less polluting than motorbikes and scooters, Tata Motors said on the Nano Web site.
India is at the forefront of the move to low-cost cars and is doing its best to
(Excerpt) Read more at iht.com ...
What's that in foot-ergs per m3?
And naturally, all of the "some" environmentalist ride donkeys or the wind to work, right?
Environmentalism, as a movement, has been hijacked by the anti-capitalist crowd. They don't like freedom and they HATE machines---unless the machines belong to them.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Cars that get excellent gas mileage, cheap enough that poor people can afford them.
And the busy-bodies hate the very idea of them.
The permanently outraged are stuck on permanent outrage. There is no appeasing them. We have to learn to ignore them. You don’t try to decipher noise, you adjust your squelch and tune it out.
Actually they would like to have a lot of people die off. They are more interested in flora and fauna than people.
As I recall, my father was fairly big in our home state’s environmental movement at one time. This was decades ago when the goal was conservation. Wise use and maintenance of natural resources? Yes! Anti-industry, anti-hunting, anti-fishing, anti-technology? No.
Today’s common “environmentalist” wants everybody to live like the Flintstones while they live like the Jetsons.
Costs $2500 and gets 47 mpg? Where can I get one?
Irrational people will do rhetorical pretzels to justify irrational behavior.
The most important thing for them (and by inference, for everybody) is survival in a crash due to their driving incompetence and/or inattention.
It's not an individual choice, ya know.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences. -- C. S. Lewis
Ooh La La, wait til the enviros figure out that all these Indians want washing machines, dryers and dishwashers.
As I’ve told (since the early 90’s) enviros who always decried the booming populations of India and China and their impact on the world environment, by denying the fruits of modern technology to women to ease the burdens of their daily chores, you are condemning women to a life of drudgery centered around household chores.
Silence.
Femininism, meet environmentalism, lol! BrainLOCK!
Interesting quote:
If the Tata takes off, then eventually the major automakers will also need to make supercheap cars for developing regions. And most cant. Every G.M. model bears at least $1,500 in costs just to cover the corporations pension and health-care liabilitiesa kind of original sin burdening any Pontiac or Chevy.
Unless they are Bodacious, of course.
You ever wonder where the communist crowd went to when the old Soviet Union collapsed and their proletarian paradise was discredited as a philosophy?. It took a while but the environmental movement is now securely infiltrated.
The Elite want roads that are empty of everybody except the Elite, so they hate affordable cars
This is, indeed, TITillating news. But you need to know that the TATA Motors is run by a bunch of BOOBS and will soon go BUST.
Or, like Chrysler here a number of years ago, they’ll simply get on the government TEAT to save the TATA.
(Did I miss one?)
The cost of Four of the US mandated Air Bags would be about the cost of the Indian car.
Thanks You, Mr. Congressman.
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