What we're doing wrong
Model Tata
19th January 2008
The world's cheapest car is ready to roll off the assembly line to the tune of 250,000 a year
Image Credit: Tata Group
In the spirit of Ford’s Model T and the Volkswagen Beetle, car manufacturer Tata Group has given India its own “people’s car”: the Nano. The world’s cheapest car, at 100,000 rupees (about $2,500), was unveiled this week. The new factory is ready to make 250,000 cars a year.
Tata Group’s founder says the inspiration was humanitarian: Only seven or eight people per 1,000 in India own a car (compared with about 500 per 1,000 in America). The normal means of transport for many families is the motorcycle, even if it means precariously balancing five people atop its tiny frame. But critics point out that the country’s underdeveloped roads are simply not ready for a motoring revolution – cities such as New Delhi and Mumbai are already plagued by traffic jams and smog.
If cars continue to boom in India as predicted, the country’s carbon-dioxide emissions from vehicles could increase more than six times by 2035. What India really needs, argues the Centre for Science and Environment in Delhi, is investment in public transport, which would not only be good for the air, it would also – unlike the Nano – be affordable to the country’s poorest.
Published in The Green Report in The Globe and Mail
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