$2500 Tata Nano

The big news today, of course, is the launch of India’s Tata Motors’ $2500 Nano automobile. That’s right, India is building cars (there are more on the way from other makers, including a possible Renault/Bajaj collaboration) that cost half as much as a new Vespa. And Tata, who you’ve probably never heard of until this week, is a rapidly-growing superpower with steel, manufacturing, automotive, industrial, and hotel resources. The company is currently in the process of acquiring the pride of their former imperialist conqueror, Land Rover/Jaguar, from Ford Motor Co.

Ratan Tata, quoted in a press release, described the origins of the car:

I observed families riding on two-wheelers–the father driving the scooter, his young kid standing in front of him, his wife seated behind him holding a little baby. It lead me to wonder whether one could conceive of a safe, affordable, all-weather form of transport for such a family.

4 thoughts on “$2500 Tata Nano”

  1. Dude, I send you the bajaj link 2 days ago and you wait until Reuters tells you about the Tata. Nice. Tha’ts so Chicago.

  2. Turns out someone is smearing this small economical microcar as ecologically undesirable: “The potential impact of Tata’s Nano has given environmentalist nightmares, with visions of the tiny cars clogging India’s already-choked roads and collectively spewing millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the air.” – even though it produces less pollution than the two wheelers (presumably 2 stroke) it will be replacing.

    This criticism also ignores (perhaps by design) the same company’s zero pollution compressed air car that will travel 120 miles between compressed air refills at speeds up to 70mph.

    http://www.chimpsternation.com/forum?c=showthread&ThreadID=1809

    http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Air_car_runs_on_compressed_air_0104.html

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