Here's a set of Tata's.
Posted on 01/09/2008 11:30:46 PM PST by Arjun
The Tata Rs 1-lakh car is here! And it's called the Nano!
Tata Group chairman Ratan Tata on Thursday unveiled the Tata Nano at the 9th Auto Expo in New Delhi.
Details of the People's Car:
Ratan Tata, while unveiling the nano, said: "The car will meet all current safety norms and all emission criteria. The pollution it will cause will be lower than 2-wheelers."
The car, Tata said, is smaller than a Maruti [Get Quote], but has 21 per cent more volume or space inside than the 800. He said that the dealer price of the car will be Rs 1 lakh, plus value-added tax (VAT) plus transport charges.
The car will have a 624-cc petrol engine generating 33 bhp of power. It will sport a 30-litre fuel tank and 4-speed manual gearshift. The car will come with air conditioning, but will have no power steering. It will have front disk and rear drum brakes. The company claims mileage of 23 km per litre.
The car's dashboard features just a speedometer, fuel gauge, and oil light. The car does not have reclining seats or radio. The shock absorbers are basic.
Nano, the world's cheapest car, costs almost half of the cheapest car currently available anywhere in the world.
''Since, a promise is a promise the standard dealer version will cost Rs 1 lakh,'' said Tata Sons chairman Ratan Tata.
He informed that the car is 8 per cent smaller bumper to bumper, than the Maruti800 but at the same time 21 per cent larger in its interiors and can sit up to four people.
Dispelling myths that the car was not safe enough Tata said, 'The car has passed the full-frontal crash and the side impact crash''. He also side stepped emission concerns and said the car will meet Euro IV norms.
While critics had been sceptical throughout about the car meeting safety and emission norms, coming as it is at that price, Tata said he was happy to announce that Nano meets all norms as would a modern car.
The car is eight per cent shorter than Maruti 800 on bumper to bumper length, but is 21 per cent more spacious, claimed Tata.
Alluding to fears expressed by environmentalist R K Pachauri and green activist Sunita Narain that the car at that price would add more vehicles on the road leading to higher vehicular pollution, Tata said the 624 cc, 33 HP petrol engine meets Bharat Stage-III emission norms and can also meet the Euro 4 norms.
"Pachauri will not have a nightmare and Sunita Narain can also sleep," he quipped, while recalling that some people had suggested that the car should be called 'Pachauri' and some others said that it should be named 'Mamta' � probably referring to the position TMC leader Mamta Banerjee had taken against the setting up of the small-car project at Singur in West Bengal.
Commenting on the safety standard, he said the car has gone through a full frontal crash test as per norms.
The Nano will come in three variants -- standard and two deluxe models with AC. The standard car would be available for Rs 1 lakh (ex-showroom), while VAT and transportation costs are extra.
The Nano is expected to be commerically launched in the second half of 2008. News reports say that Tata Motors [Get Quote] hopes to sell 500,000 units of the car, almost four times the number of Indicas it sells. Tata plans to focus on a market segment hitherto untapped.
Not since the launch of the Maruti 800 in 1983 has any car gripped the imagination of a nation and indeed car manufacturers the world over so intensely. If commercially successful, the Tata Nano can alter the passenger car market in India, and perhaps the world, beyond description.
The Deux Cheveax is a collector’s item now? Wow. It seemed like a French version of VW’s Thing, but with poorer structure and mechanics. (No offense intended if you are French.)
Translation to English units: That's about an 8 gallon tank and about 54 mpg. at 33 BHP, even with an extremely low curb weight, you're probably looking at a top speed of 40 mph. Honestly I wouldn't want to drive any vehicle much faster than that n Indian roads.
My question: Why mess around with the 33HP, 0.6L gas engine? You'd get more bang for the buck with an electric motor and batteries of about the same weight and displacement.
For years now, I've toyed around with the idea of an electric car for short jaunts around town, with a real car for road trips. The price of electric cars has been the sticking point. $2500 is getting a lot closer to what I would pay for a car that's useful for a short commute and nothing else.
I want one! Not to drive on highways but on my own property, I use 4-wheelers a lot but it is too cold in the winter. I’d love to have a closed vehicle.
Which bike? Even my old crappy Ninja 500 can out-accelerate most four-wheeled vehicles.
A ‘93 Kawasaki 750 Vulcan, cruiser. But, I am 270 lbs. It out accels most cars, but I can tell it is working hard if I get on it.
Here's a set of Tata's.
In that case I would rather cut through the traffic on a motor scooter. Which is about the only reason to have a motor scooter.
No one spends as much time in their cars as Americans do. We demand our comfy seats, 10-speaker stereos and cup-holders that can accommodate a Big Gulp bucket of soda. We like to be able to jig to the left and pass someone who's only doing 75 mph when we'd rather do 80.
I'm not looking down judgmentally from above; I'm listing some of the things I like about my car.
But your basic point is spot-on. To be competitive on a global basis, American automakers need to adjust their offerings to local tastes. Companies that have a scant presence in the US, like Fiat, Pugeot and Renault, dominate the small but expanding market for cars in the developing world.
No car currently offered for sale in the US would be competitive in that market. I don't know if the American automakers' foreign subsidiaries are more in tune, I suspect not, or at least not enough. Ford has the most robust overseas contacts, and has log offered models like the Anglia and Capri in the UK that weren't offered in the US. They own a controlling stake in Mazda and own Jaguar outright. But I'm not seeing their models for developing markets.
Smart has been a big seller in Europe, and I think they'd be a big seller in the US if they ever manage to get here. I'm crestfallen that they apparently won't offer the Roadster here.
But somebody is going to come from outside and eat their lunch. Hyundai came out of nowhere 20 years ago, and had a good time of it. They have joined the porker parade recently, though.
That's the pattern. 30-40 years ago, Volkswagen offered a spartan car many families -- and even many teenagers -- could afford. VW moved upscale and then Honda, Toyota and Datsun (Nissan) came into the American market, and cashed in when the pil embargoes and recession hit, and suddenly folks were looking for cheap cars that sipped gas.
I drove a late '70s Honda Civic -- it was bare-bones, to say the least. If you parked a 1979 Civic next to a 2008 Civic, you would not see a hint of familial resemblance. But at least the Honda had a better heater than the air-cooled vee-dub.
Then Honda, Toyota and Nissan got, step by step, more polished, more upscale, and more expensive. That again created an opening at the low end of the market, and the Koreans came in to displace the Japanese just as the Japanese had displaced the Germans.
My recollection, and it may be fogged by the passage of time, is that the first Hyundai hit the American market the same year as the Yugo -- the Hyundai for $5K, the Yugo for $4K. Hyundai succeeded because they actually managed to build a reliable, fairly comfortable car at that price point. You could afford a new, warrantied Hyundai for about the price of a used Toyota.
The lower-priced Yugo failed because it sucked. Seriously. To say it sucked like an Electrolux would be to vastly overestimate the suckage power of a vacuum cleaner. It was not only uncomfortable, but of uneven build quality, unreliable and rust-prone. The only reason it isn't the worst car in history is because the Trebant chugged in under the wire. I'd rather push an AMC Pacer than drive a Yugo.
Another success in Europe but failure in America was the Renault Cinq, marketed in the US as "Le Car." Tiny and boxy, with parts and service difficult to find and therefore expensive, it had no creature comforts and that roll-up canvas sunroof thiny that Americans have never cottoned to. It was a reasonably well-built little econobox, but couldn't match the efficiency or reliability of its Japanese competitors.
Amd its name was grammatically incorrect. It should have been "La Car." "Une voiture" is feminine. But I don't think that point of French grammar was the key to its weak US sales.
I prefer to drive an inexpensive car. It saves money for other things. I will hand the keys to my Scion to the valet at the best restaurant in town, and come out ahead of the guy who is driving his Mercedes to the McDonalds drive-thru.
You're using "inexpensive" in relative terms. Your Scion is no Bentley, but for large segments of the world's population, it costs a lifetime's worth of income. My ride is a '99 Sebring convertible that I bought in 2003 for $13K. I consider that a prudent and frugal purchase. But it is far out of reach for a lot of folks.
Which brings us back to your initial point -- there is a market that is aching for a $2500 car. That is a market that US automakers are not meeting. And it is a market they have given over to Indian and Chinese conglomerates. I'd expect other entries into the minimal car market -- perhaps from Indonesia, Thailand, South Africa, Egypt or Albania. All countries with enough money to launch such a venture and with enough modern infrastructure to make it work.
“even with an extremely low curb weight, you’re probably looking at a top speed of 40 mph.”
I seriously doubt it. A car that small (in terms of frontal area), it probably wouldn’t take much more than about 15 HP to push it along at 60 mph. Maxed out, I’d say about 75-80 mph. Any kind of hill or headwind would seriously cut into that, though, and acceleration would be pretty dismal. I wouldn’t want to drive it on our highways, but in a country where things move more slowly in general, it’d probably be OK.
LOL!! “In a Ta-ta” Can’t wait for the new song that Rush comes up with!
There is something SERIOUSLY wrong with your bike. I drive a 250 cc scoot (Piaggio MP3), that accelerates fine with passenger to 65. With a top speed of 75, however, acceleration to that speed is S L O W. All my Harley ridin’ friends love it and often want to trade for a while during a ride.
Looks more like a rolling death trap
If it has a 12v electrical system and a spare spot on the fuse block, every kid with a spare afternoon, an imagination and twenty bucks will have a radio in that puppy.
My first car was a 1969 Dodge Dart. It was barely older than I was (you do the math). I pulled the old AM radio and replaced it with a deee-luxe AM/FM. cassette system with a horkin' 10 watts of power per channel. I had to hacksaw around the knob openings in the steel dash panel to fit it in, and carve into the door panels with a utility knife to mount the speakers.
I wired it to the cigarette lighter circuit, because the lead was close and I was lazy. Come to find out, the lighter (nowadays they call it "accessory") circuit does not turn off with the ignition, So if I forgot to turn off the radio before I got out of the car, it might drain the battery. That didn't happen often. The radio didn't draw a lot of amps. But I did frequently get in the car and find the radio blaring because the tape had ended.
I'm 37 (there, I spared you the math), and bought my current car when I was 33. It i the only car I have ever owned in which I did not wire the sound system myself.
I had a Fiat 850 Spider. I loved driving it, until one day, while taking my brother for a ride, we smelled gasoline. I pulled over, open the trunk and saw gas spurting out from the carb on to the red hot exhaust manifold. I say spurt, but it actually was flowing solid from a 1/4 inch hole in the carb.
We back away until I was sure the thing would not burst into flames. Turns out, the overflow hose is directly above the exhaust manifold. The pin that held the hose in place came loose, releasing the hose.
But by the grace of God, my name was almost changed to Sensei Burn.
Cargo space for goodies picked up on said errands? :) (Might look kinda funny with grocery bags bungee-corded to the roof...)
“I wouldn;t drive it even if it costs $5.”
I would. Not on the highway though. My point is that if it were cheap enough, it could be practical transport around town. Now I gotta figure out how much is Rp 1 lakh. I think 1 lakh equals 10,000.
Nothing wrong. Just had it at the shop for an oil change and adjustment. 624cc is just way underpowered for a four passenger vehicle.
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