India unveils Power Wheels for adults!
Welcome to the world’s cheapest car, perfect for the world’s cheapest people!
Costing just 100,000 rupees ($1,979; £1,366), the Nano will now go on sale across India next month, with deliveries starting in July.
Tata hopes the 10-foot (3-metre) long, five-seater car will be cheap enough to encourage millions of Indians to trade up from their motorcycles.
Trade up their motorcycles? Who can resist the cool allure of a bad-ass hog like only the Indians can make? Luckily, the owner of the company, Ratan Tata, has your needs in mind:
“I hope it will provide safe, affordable four-wheel transportation to families who till now have not been able to own a car.”
Affordable is a reasoned argument…but safe? Plastic body, plastic bumper, no air bag, no power steering, and no A/C when sitting in Mumbai traffic, so rolling (!) down the windows and taking in that congested air will be a necessity. Safety, huh? We at the tech support division of Mitchieville would like to test drive one of these things, but we’re afraid it will be stuck to our butts once we emerge from the vehicle. We’ll also have to get a less sturdy traffic cone for the obstacle course or the bumpers might get too dented upon collision.
I don’t know how your average Garunder Six-Pack is supposed to transport his seven kids to Six Flags over Bhopal in this thing. Even best-case acceleration can get you from 0-60 mph in 21 seconds. Feel the white-knucle power!
If these types of cars are so great, why don’t we see a lot more of them in North America? Surely there are a lot of people who need cheap, reliable transportation. All the greens will be excited to hear that the car is so light and fuel efficient (~ 60 mpg). You can see those dinky little SmartCars everywhere, but even they have steel bumpers and steel exteriors. They also have ABS, power steering, front and side airbags, and luxuries like radios.
SmartCars are bought by people looking to tell you a story, much like Seth Godin’s marketing strategy he’s talked about for companies like Google. Starting at around $17,000, the SmartCar is not even the cheap alternative to a regular car that can be purchased at the same price and arguably be a lot safer in a crash. The Nano would be wiped right off the road by even a mid-sized.
Maybe these cars will fly in a culture that uses a lot of motorcycles and scooters, but I’m not seeing the difference. There’s also no pity for a guy who’s 6′3″ who will have his knees jammed into his chin riding in one of these contraptions. If I were a courier in India, I’d likely just stick to my Vespa. My current car gets just as good gas mileage and can survive a crash better than a “smart” car would.
March 23rd, 2009 at 1:54 pm
So what if they’re not safe. India has plenty of people to spare, and the few thousand killed in these plastic boxes each year won’t even make a dent in the soaring population growth.
They really need to put the old Chevy 327’s in these things, then watch ‘em go! 0-60 in a LOT less than 21 seconds!
March 23rd, 2009 at 3:00 pm
D, you always know how to make me smile.
Can you drop a Chevy engine in this thing? I’m thinking it would melt the whole car.
March 23rd, 2009 at 3:43 pm
Or, use the cars as coffins. Kind of a duel purpose type of thing.
March 23rd, 2009 at 4:21 pm
Yeah, aren’t the EI’s big on funeral pyres? The remaining gas in the tank would make a great accellerant, get things off to a fiery start!
The toxic fumes from all that plastic kinda worries me, though.
March 23rd, 2009 at 4:40 pm
No no no, not *toxic fumes*, think of them more as *scented pot-pourri*.
March 23rd, 2009 at 5:39 pm
“Costing just 100,000 rupees ($1,979; £1,366), the Nano will now go on sale across India next month, with deliveries starting in July.”
Reminds me of the Saturday Night Live skit–”Hey, hey, we’re Adobe! The little car that’s made out of clay!”
“Tata hopes the 10-foot (3-metre) long, five-seater car will be cheap enough to encourage millions of Indians to trade up from their motorcycles.”
What isn’t said is that the only people who will fit the seats are Mini-Me and Willow Ufgood.
““I hope it will provide safe, affordable four-wheel transportation to families who till now have not been able to own a car.””
As I recall, this was the argument behind the Community Reinvestment Act here in the states, and why Fannie and Freddie had no oversight at all–what could possibly go wrong?
March 23rd, 2009 at 11:59 pm
If these things are so light then why do they only get 60mpg. My 1990 Ford Festiva got over 60mpg when it was new and during my last test made 55.66mpg last year. It weighs about 1,700lbs. I’ve also tested the bumper and it stood up to a 30mph collision. I’ll stick with it till it dies.
March 24th, 2009 at 6:32 am
I’ve seen Barbie cars at Wal-Mart bigger than that.
March 24th, 2009 at 10:18 pm
“My 1990 Ford Festiva got over 60mpg when it was new and during my last test made 55.66mpg last year.”
My first car was a 1993 Festiva that I called Rudy. Mine was never THAT good on gas, but enough so that I only had to fill up every other week. My cousin with his gas-burning 1967 Cougar hated me.
It killed me to get rid of that car in 2003, but it was nickel and diming me to death by then. If figured if I was going to go into massive debt, I might as well do it in a new car.
I’m 32 years old and I’ve only owned those two cars. I’m either one of the smartest men on earth or one of the most pathetic.