Ratan Tata’s dream has finally become a reality.The much awaited 1-lakh car,
what could be termed as a revolutionary new product and touted has the world’s cheapest and peoples car is now ready to hit the Indian roads and see the light of the day after much deliberation.
What fascinated me is not just the launch of a small, affordable car, but the Journey it went through. The promises, the process, efforts and the challenges faced in launching it and also the time of launching. Ever since Ratan Tata conceived the idea of making a 1 lakh car for Indian commuters way back in 2003, he and his group had to face many hurdles - Political, Technical and Economical.
Keeping the cost of production well within the bracket even after six years of its conception, at a time when the input costs were soaring and critics skeptical about the car meeting the safety and emissions norm and fuel efficiency and ridiculing the very idea of making a car run at that price – was a challenge in itself. It took a great bunch of brilliant engineers and smart engineering to bring out the machine that meets the Bharat stage III emissions norm and could also meet the stringent Euro 4 norms and return a fuel efficiency of 23kmpl.After this comes the political hurdle, where in they were forced to move out of the Singur West Bengal, and had to shift their manufacturing base to Sanand in Gujarat. This combined with challenge of making it look like a “real” car, presentable to the public was no easy task. They even ended up with 37 patents.
Now there’s also other side to this, many argue that the affordable nature of this car can choke up the cities and add to the already high traffic congestion and increase the pollution.They may be right. But by global standards, number of cars per thousand persons or square kilometer is very less in India and prohibiting the cars and not producing them is not the kind of solution we can be looking at and is not conducive. Rather, building new roads and stepping up the infrastructure can be the way ahead.
Critics said it couldn’t be done. It couldn’t run. It couldn’t even be a proper car. But now after its launch, over the next several months it can dramatically expand the size of the Indian car market, boosting economic activity during a downturn. Tata also plans to export number of cars to other developing nations and launch a version of it in Europe and US in 2011 or 2012. It fulfills the dream of many families who wouldn’t have afforded a car otherwise. In many ways it’s more than just a car and the name is Nano.
-Vikranth
what could be termed as a revolutionary new product and touted has the world’s cheapest and peoples car is now ready to hit the Indian roads and see the light of the day after much deliberation.
What fascinated me is not just the launch of a small, affordable car, but the Journey it went through. The promises, the process, efforts and the challenges faced in launching it and also the time of launching. Ever since Ratan Tata conceived the idea of making a 1 lakh car for Indian commuters way back in 2003, he and his group had to face many hurdles - Political, Technical and Economical.
Keeping the cost of production well within the bracket even after six years of its conception, at a time when the input costs were soaring and critics skeptical about the car meeting the safety and emissions norm and fuel efficiency and ridiculing the very idea of making a car run at that price – was a challenge in itself. It took a great bunch of brilliant engineers and smart engineering to bring out the machine that meets the Bharat stage III emissions norm and could also meet the stringent Euro 4 norms and return a fuel efficiency of 23kmpl.After this comes the political hurdle, where in they were forced to move out of the Singur West Bengal, and had to shift their manufacturing base to Sanand in Gujarat. This combined with challenge of making it look like a “real” car, presentable to the public was no easy task. They even ended up with 37 patents.
Now there’s also other side to this, many argue that the affordable nature of this car can choke up the cities and add to the already high traffic congestion and increase the pollution.They may be right. But by global standards, number of cars per thousand persons or square kilometer is very less in India and prohibiting the cars and not producing them is not the kind of solution we can be looking at and is not conducive. Rather, building new roads and stepping up the infrastructure can be the way ahead.
Critics said it couldn’t be done. It couldn’t run. It couldn’t even be a proper car. But now after its launch, over the next several months it can dramatically expand the size of the Indian car market, boosting economic activity during a downturn. Tata also plans to export number of cars to other developing nations and launch a version of it in Europe and US in 2011 or 2012. It fulfills the dream of many families who wouldn’t have afforded a car otherwise. In many ways it’s more than just a car and the name is Nano.
-Vikranth
Mr. Tata claims that it emits 101gm/km of CO2 of a 624 cc engine. Which is a commendable work done by the R&D. But this is a starting point. It is said that they are going to release Electric version soon. That would be wonderful.
ReplyDeleteOn the other side we need to see how much does this emit CO2 6 to 8 yrs down the line.
This is how 'sanguinity' pays!!
ReplyDeleteThat apart, really a huge revolution amongst all the criticism. Rightly said Vikranth, Spinning the infrastructure instead of throwing words is the way to go. Applies entirely to almost all the issues in general, do something instead of cribbing!
i am proud that finally we have a product which is completely Indian and competitive in global market.
ReplyDeleteI am just worried about the traffic that Indian roads have to bear in coming years, this is just gonna blow it out of proportions and we will soon see congestion tax being placed in Cities.