Tata Motors completes vehicle
About six years ago, Tata Motors said it would build a $2,000 car to be released in India. Today the company announced it will, in fact, be available soon.
The cars won’t actually be delivered until July, and people won’t just be able to walk into a dealership and buy one for a while. The company will soon begin a lottery to decide who the first 100,000 Nano owners will be.
For the greater good
Tata Motors began its quest with the intent of making a vehicle that low-income families could afford. The company intends to stick to its price, which means it will be making cars purely for others’ benefit for a few years. Analysts say that although the cars are already in high demand, the company won’t make any profit for about three years.
Waiting list
Aspiring Nano owners will likely be able to get the cars without personal loans, especially if they begin saving money now. Tata Motors’ managing director, Ravi Kant, says the company might not be able to produce more than 50,000 Nanos this year. Some of the factories that will produce the cars aren’t even finished yet.
Nano’s future
Nonetheless, Tata hopes to be producing 350,000 Nanos annually three years from now. It also aims to branch out to offering the cars in Europe and the United States by then.
Smart Cars, currently available in the U.S., look like Nanos but cost about eight times as much.
The company will have to beef up safety features on the cars to make them street legal in other countries. The models available in Europe and the U.S. will be more expensive because they will require more rear-end reinforcement and airbags.
The Nano, as is
For now, the Nano will be street legal in India, though it has no airbags and a low crash-test rating. It also has no air-conditioning, no power anything and a four gallon tank. The vehicle gets 42 to 47 miles per gallon. Its top speed is 75 mph.
Sounds like a sweet deal to me. It’s a wonderful thing to do, especially for low-income families. However, the car doesn’t seem too practical if you asked me. Most low-income families are big families and that doesn’t look like a family car at all. I don’t think it’s a safe car for children to be in. But hey, I guess a car is a car when you have financial limitations.
I’d love a car for that cheap, but it’s going to be a few years until its even close to ready for the US. It will have to pass crash safety tests, and it will have to have airbags and anti-lock brakes installed. That said, if it keeps under $5,000 that is going to put it in range for a lot of people that couldn’t afford a new car otherwise. When they come out with a pickup, I’ll be first in line.
I want two so I can say I have two TATA’s!