dhillon

TATA's NANO: A Boon or a Curse for Indian Roads?

World's cheapest car to hit Indian roads today

The rich are also eyeing the fuel-efficient car

Mar 23, 2009:-India's Tata Motors will launch the World's cheapest car "Nano" in Mumbai, the country's financial hub.

The vehicle could transform how millions travel in the country and many fear it would cause more traffic jams on the already crowded Indian roads.

The four-door jelly-bean shaped car will cost around Rs 100,000 ($2,000), ex-showroom, for the no-frills version that has a two-cylinder 623 cc, rear-mounted engine delivering a top speed of 105 kilometres per hour

The demand for the car is huge, say dealers, who've been flooded with queries about the car. Nano's launch has been delayed by about five months because of limited production capacity -violent protests by farmers over the acquisition of land for the project in West Bengal state forced the Tatas to shift the Nano plant to Gujarat. The Gujarat plant won't be ready until late 2010 and so the Nano is being made at Tata Motors' existing factories, reducing output.

What do you say guys? Is this going to be good for Indian Roads?

pooja

“It’s one of the worst things that could happen to Indian roads. Our roads are already narrow and over-crowded. If this car is made available, there’ll be a rush to it and before we know it, there will be endless jams on our roads.”

adil

Cheap Nano carries high pollution cost

Bare-bones auto to help car-hungry Indians, but success means more pollution, gridlock

NEW DELHI – A month ago, Rahul Guglani was hired by a dealership in a well-to-do neighbourhood here to help sell the world's cheapest car – the new $2,500 (Canadian) Nano that will give many of the world's poorest their first chance to an auto.

Yet even as Tata Motors formally unveiled the Nano yesterday in Mumbai, 31-year-old Guglani said he realizes the better he is at his job, the worse off India's capital city may be.

"Everyone who owns a motorcycle wants a Nano," Guglani said, sitting in the gleaming showroom at Sanya Autos Ltd. in a central New Delhi neighbourhood.

"We'll have more cars on the road and it's definitely going to be worse for the environment with more pollution."

Guglani echoed what many environmentalists have said for more than a year since Tata first announced plans for the pint-sized Nano, known across India as "the people's car." They worry the number of cars in New Delhi is already alarmingly high – some 1,100 new vehicles are registered in the city every day – and that the Nano will compound pollution woes.

Studies already show one person dies every hour in New Delhi from air pollution-related diseases, said Anumita Roy Chowdhury of the Centre for Science and Environment in New Delhi. Chowdhury said before ing the Nano, potential purchasers should ask themselves what kind of city they want to live in, "a congested polluted one or one that promises a good quality of life?"

Even without the Nano, brash, fast-growing India has become one of the world's biggest polluters.

Its total emissions are the fourth-largest in the world, after the United States, China and Russia. And while the government here is quick to point out that India's per capita carbon footprint is 5 per cent of the average American's, on many days New Delhi is thick with a soupy haze of smog.

"I don't think the Nano will solve the common man's problem; it's only going to add to traffic troubles," said Sneha Thapliyal, who teaches environmental studies at the Shri Ram School in New Delhi.

"More Nanos on the street means more traffic congestion, which in turn means slower traffic. That means lower fuel efficiency."

Tata has done well building a buzz for the Nano, which, with its bubble-shaped front, has drawn comparisons to the Volkswagen Beetle. In a country of 1.1 billion, where more than 250 million live on $1 a day, prospective ers are required to pay about $8 just to apply for a Nano.

During the first two months the car is on sale, some 40,000 to 50,000 ers will be selected by a random computerized draw, Guglani said.

To make the Nano cheaper, Tata eliminated air , and the passenger-side mirror, air conditioning and a radio. (The Nano wouldn't be eligible for Canadian roads because of the no-frills construction.) The Nano comes with a single windshield wiper and a no-frills two-cylinder engine. Tata will begin accepting bookings for the car from April 9 to 25 and deliveries will start in early July.

Parveen Sharma, 47, hopes to be one of the lucky ones.

Sharma runs a photocopy shop in New Delhi and spent yesterday visiting various dealers in the hunt for a third car for his family of five.

His first stop was the Tata dealership, where Guglani was fielding dozens of calls from interested ers. After asking questions about the Nano's fuel capacity and price, Sharma left with his wife and 11-year-old son and drove to a nearby dealership that sells electric cars.

For 20 minutes, the Sharmas listened to a sales pitch from staff selling the Reva, a small but peppy electric car that retails for $6,000.

Parveen Sharma walked out unconvinced. "It's too much money," he huffed. "I'm not worried about the environment."

Sitting inside the Reva dealership at a small coffee table decorated with a red rose, Reva's marketing manager Pavan Sachdeva shrugged. "There's going to be more cars on the road spitting out carbon dioxide," he said, referring to the Nano announcement. "It's a bad day."

March 24, 2009
Rick Westhead
SOUTH ASIA BUREAU