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It’s a good time to be Tata Motors. Tata has recently come out with the Tata Nano, a compact city car that seats 4 and costs about $2,000 for the basic version and a $3,300 for the higher end Nano LX. About 230,000 customers have placed orders.
This is, of course, more than Tata can produce at the moment. They can build about 100,000 cars this year, and will use a lottery system to decide which lucky customers will actually walk away with a car.
Is the Tata Nano clean? Not especially. Although there is speculation that Tata might one day come out with an electric version, the current Nano runs on gasoline. It’s a small car, but its footprint will be measured in the hundreds of thousands.
Obviously, the growing middle class in India and China provides an unprecedentedly huge market for no-frills, ultra cheap cars. The question is – what kind of gasoline-free car will work for the Indian market? China’s BYD is already selling cheap electric cars. But would those work in India? Is the infrastructure in place?
Electric cars in India might not work yet, but biodiesel probably would. India is rich in biomass, and the biofuel technology doesn’t require the same kind of overarching infrastructure that electric cars will need. According to a rumor on WheelsUnplugged, a diesel Nano might actually be in the works; if it gets the same kind of customer response as the current version, you can bet that a lot of people will start producing and selling biodiesel to make it run.
Via Green, Inc
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written by loleeGreen, May 05, 2009
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written by Lisa Hawkins, May 05, 2009
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written by Chelsea, May 05, 2009
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written by Jim Jacobs, May 05, 2009
Perhaps Detroit is paying attention.
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written by Ryan Baker, May 06, 2009
On the other side, I didn't quite understand why biofuel would be good. Sure, India produces a lot of food, but they eat pretty much all of it. I really doubt they have lots of excess ready to put into biofuel.
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written by Yoni, May 06, 2009
You are right. The Nano should get props for having awesome mileage. And it IS better than the alternatives you mentioned.
But it's a gas car. That's not just bad ideologically, but practically. Forgetting GHG impact, do you really want to get India's rising middle class hooked on gas?
@Ryan
Electric cars require more than just charging at home. They require charging all around, as planned by companies like Better Place, Coulomb, etc.
And as for the biofuel, I'm talking biofuel 2.0 - the kind you don't make out of food, the kind you make out of jatropha, wood chips, and other things that would otherwise go to waste
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written by Ryan Baker, May 07, 2009
On the other note.. maybe.. but that is some pretty heavy duty infrastructure of it's own. I'd certainly recommend investing in electric cars and infrastructure over bio fuel. Bio fuel only makes sense to me as a way to reuse existing infrastructure, of which India has some, but wants much much more than they have. In other words in 10 years the majority of India's infrastructure will be new no matter what path they take.
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written by David, May 08, 2009
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written by Vineet, May 14, 2009
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written by amit, November 28, 2009
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Add to that the fact that the vehicles it will be displacing are most likely 2-stroke scooters that get only marginally better mileage (and can carry fewer people, and are less safe).
While it's true that this does represent a tremendous new demand for cars - which is not a good thing - especially if the road-building plans in India continue to be scaled up, it's important to untangle ideology from impacts. The Nano isn't that bad.