Tata: Nano News
06-04-2009, 02:46 PM
#42
The sizzle in the Steak
06-04-2009, 02:49 PM
#43
Senior Moderator
06-04-2009, 02:55 PM
#45
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, but then after thinking about it, I began to 
06-05-2009, 12:35 AM
#47
Safety Car
Unfortunately it may be a benchmark for lower American standards. NA is on the verge of a lower horizon...this may be a staple of that. hate to be cynical..but it is true.
when it comes to TATA going stateside, im hesitant to stir up a debate...but BTWN our soon to be socialist economy, and outsourcing manufacturing, TATA may prevail. again, the Hyundai of 2009...
unfortunatley, TATA safety standards do not compare to our regulations. lets see how NA standards corrsepond to the safety laws and increased prcing
Last edited by ThermonMermon; 06-05-2009 at 12:39 AM.
06-05-2009, 09:07 AM
#51
99 TL, 06 E350
This car is meant to be a replacement to a scooter, not a full size car. If they are marketing as a replacement to a scooter with a roof. It's sheer brilliance. Watch for the Asians to produce a scooter like car soon. Yet again, the domestics are going to fall behind in these ideas.
Last edited by Black Tire; 06-05-2009 at 09:10 AM.
01-15-2010, 02:13 PM
#52
Pricing Speculation for North American Nano
Cheap car from India could cost $8,000 in US
Ultracheap Nano could come to US in 3 years with $8,000 price tag
DETROIT (AP) -- The world's cheapest car is being readied for sale in the U.S., but by the time India's Tata Nano is retrofitted to meet emissions and safety standards, it won't be that cheap.
Tata Technologies Ltd., the global engineering arm of the Tata group conglomerate, brought the tiny car to Detroit as a publicity stunt for the engineering group.
Tata officials, while maintaining that they couldn't speak for Tata Motors, maker of the $2,500 Nano, said they were involved with the Nano from concept until it launched last July in Mumbai.
They wouldn't say when the Nano might arrive in the U.S. or how much it might cost here, although Ratan Tata, chairman of the group of Tata companies, has said it should be ready for U.S. distribution in about three years.
Tata Motors already has made a European version of the four-seat car that will cost about $8,000 when it debuts in 2011, and a Tata Technologies official said privately that the U.S. version is expected to have a comparable price. The official did not want to be identified because the price has not been made public.
Warren Harris, Tata Technologies president, would only say that the price would be more than the roughly $2,500 charged in India.
"The structural changes that would need to be made, the changes that would be required as far as emissions are concerned, and some of the features that would be appropriate to add to the vehicle for the North American market, obviously that would drive up the price point," he said.
Tata Technologies could be involved in bringing the car up to U.S. standards, said Tony Jones, associate vice president of the global automotive practice.
Before it can be sold here, the car's two-cylinder, 623cc engine would have to be engineered to meet stronger U.S. pollution standards, he said. Airbags would have to be added, the roof strengthened and the front bumper lengthened to meet U.S. requirements to limit damage in a 5-mph crash.
The Spartan interior, with flat bucket seats, three knobs, a horizontal switch and a steering wheel, also would have to be changed to comply with U.S. safety standards that limit movement of passengers not wearing seat belts.
Jones said the Nano Europa has airbags and has passed European safety tests with flying colors.
The Nano, with 12-inch diameter tires, electric windows in the front and crank windows in the back, gets 50 mpg on the highway and has a top speed of 65 mph.
If the $8,000 price tag holds true, it would cost far less than the $9,970 Hyundai Accent, currently the car with the lowest base sticker price in the U.S., according to the Edmunds.com automotive Web site. The price excludes shipping.
Ultracheap Nano could come to US in 3 years with $8,000 price tag
DETROIT (AP) -- The world's cheapest car is being readied for sale in the U.S., but by the time India's Tata Nano is retrofitted to meet emissions and safety standards, it won't be that cheap.
Tata Technologies Ltd., the global engineering arm of the Tata group conglomerate, brought the tiny car to Detroit as a publicity stunt for the engineering group.
Tata officials, while maintaining that they couldn't speak for Tata Motors, maker of the $2,500 Nano, said they were involved with the Nano from concept until it launched last July in Mumbai.
They wouldn't say when the Nano might arrive in the U.S. or how much it might cost here, although Ratan Tata, chairman of the group of Tata companies, has said it should be ready for U.S. distribution in about three years.
Tata Motors already has made a European version of the four-seat car that will cost about $8,000 when it debuts in 2011, and a Tata Technologies official said privately that the U.S. version is expected to have a comparable price. The official did not want to be identified because the price has not been made public.
Warren Harris, Tata Technologies president, would only say that the price would be more than the roughly $2,500 charged in India.
"The structural changes that would need to be made, the changes that would be required as far as emissions are concerned, and some of the features that would be appropriate to add to the vehicle for the North American market, obviously that would drive up the price point," he said.
Tata Technologies could be involved in bringing the car up to U.S. standards, said Tony Jones, associate vice president of the global automotive practice.
Before it can be sold here, the car's two-cylinder, 623cc engine would have to be engineered to meet stronger U.S. pollution standards, he said. Airbags would have to be added, the roof strengthened and the front bumper lengthened to meet U.S. requirements to limit damage in a 5-mph crash.
The Spartan interior, with flat bucket seats, three knobs, a horizontal switch and a steering wheel, also would have to be changed to comply with U.S. safety standards that limit movement of passengers not wearing seat belts.
Jones said the Nano Europa has airbags and has passed European safety tests with flying colors.
The Nano, with 12-inch diameter tires, electric windows in the front and crank windows in the back, gets 50 mpg on the highway and has a top speed of 65 mph.
If the $8,000 price tag holds true, it would cost far less than the $9,970 Hyundai Accent, currently the car with the lowest base sticker price in the U.S., according to the Edmunds.com automotive Web site. The price excludes shipping.
01-10-2011, 09:57 PM
#60
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2012 Tata Nano - Cheapest Brand-New Car
Check this "little" car out. It's supposed to start selling in America for $7,000.
http://consumerguideauto.howstuffwor...no-america.htm
http://consumerguideauto.howstuffwor...no-america.htm
01-11-2011, 05:32 AM
#63
Evil Mazda Driver
That's because it does suck. If the people in India won't buy it, it's going to flop here. Is it sold in the UK yet? I'm willing to bet no because Jeremy Clarkson hasn't lit one on fire just outside the showroom.
01-11-2011, 10:15 AM
#64
The result is a tall, egg-shaped 4-door with about the same footprint as the original 1960s British Mini, minimal equipment, and a rear-mounted 2-cylinder engine making 35 horsepower from 624 cubic centimeters. Top speed is barely 65 mph, the comfortable cruising pace only 55 mph.
01-11-2011, 10:52 AM
#65
Senior Moderator
Merged...
01-11-2011, 03:26 PM
#66
The sizzle in the Steak
....but clearly, this prediction wasn't that hard to predict.
07-12-2018, 06:17 AM
#67
Race Director
We’ve followed the Tata Nano -- the two-cylinder Indian peoples’ car designed from the ground up to be affordable to buy and inexpensive to operate -- with genuine (if sporadic) interest since it arrived on the scene a decade ago. With a retail price starting at just $3,500 or so, it had the potential to be a sort of Model T, or Beetle or Super Cub, for India -- more than any other single vehicle, it could have helped put one of the world’s most populous countries on wheels, earning its place in the pantheon of automotive greatness, or at least significance, in the process.
But, according to a Bloomberg report (read it here via Automotive News), the Nano’s brief run is over, with a Tata representative stating that the Nano in its “present form cannot continue beyond 2019.” Guess it won’t be coming to the United States after all.
The Nano was not a perfect vehicle by any stretch of the imagination; it was tiny, slow, not the safest in crashes and early examples apparently had an unfortunate tendency to catch on fire. But all of those shortcomings could have likely been overcome or ignored if not for one unexpected fatal flaw: It was apparently too cheap for its own good.
The Nano’s $3,500 price tag was, in a weird way, a big part of its downfall: It couldn’t really compete with scooters and motorbikes when it came to extreme rupee-pinching, while a nicer used car with more features and a more premium badge on the front could be had for a similar outlay. And compared to slightly more expensive, yet still relatively affordable, competitors like the Datsun Go or Renault Kwid: The Nano comes off very much like it was built to a specific, and low, price point. The Go and the Kwid may not be paragons of luxury (or safety), but they do a little bit better job of dressing up their fundamental frugality.It’s interesting -- when we post reviews (especially of pickup trucks), we often get commenters clamoring for smaller, stripped-down, bare-bones, affordable alternatives to the loaded-up, high-dollar testers that typically fill out our revolving motor pool. The impulse is understandable; vehicle footprints, and average transaction prices, seem to climb year after year.
Ultimately, though, automakers wouldn’t be building ever-larger, ever-cushier vehicles if people didn’t buy them, and whether we’re all going soft or we’re hooked on easy credit and 96-month auto loans, we’ve been buying them buy the lotfull. Even when stripped-down versions of mainstream vehicles are made available, they're hardly volume sellers. Salesmen might try to upsell us, but it only works because, at least in the aggregate, we want to be upsold.
There’s a psychological aspect at play here, and it’s key to understanding both the failure of the Nano and our purchasing tastes right here at home. No matter where in the world you live, a car is a huge, important purchase -- in a developing market like India, a buyer might be the first person in their family to ever get the keys to a brand-new vehicle. What type of vehicle it is says a lot about you, even if you don’t consider yourself a hardcore enthusiast. So who in their right mind would want that vehicle to look and feel like it was designed and built with cheapness as the primary design directive?
There's nothing wrong with a set of cheap wheels, but a new car that's main claim to fame is its pervasive cheapness is a losing proposition. No one aspires to poverty-spec transportation. That’s something that’s apparently as true in India as it is here in the United States, and it’s something Tata learned the hard way with the little Nano.
Read more: The Tata Nano failed because nobody aspires to own a cheap car | Autoweek
But, according to a Bloomberg report (read it here via Automotive News), the Nano’s brief run is over, with a Tata representative stating that the Nano in its “present form cannot continue beyond 2019.” Guess it won’t be coming to the United States after all.
The Nano was not a perfect vehicle by any stretch of the imagination; it was tiny, slow, not the safest in crashes and early examples apparently had an unfortunate tendency to catch on fire. But all of those shortcomings could have likely been overcome or ignored if not for one unexpected fatal flaw: It was apparently too cheap for its own good.
The Nano’s $3,500 price tag was, in a weird way, a big part of its downfall: It couldn’t really compete with scooters and motorbikes when it came to extreme rupee-pinching, while a nicer used car with more features and a more premium badge on the front could be had for a similar outlay. And compared to slightly more expensive, yet still relatively affordable, competitors like the Datsun Go or Renault Kwid: The Nano comes off very much like it was built to a specific, and low, price point. The Go and the Kwid may not be paragons of luxury (or safety), but they do a little bit better job of dressing up their fundamental frugality.It’s interesting -- when we post reviews (especially of pickup trucks), we often get commenters clamoring for smaller, stripped-down, bare-bones, affordable alternatives to the loaded-up, high-dollar testers that typically fill out our revolving motor pool. The impulse is understandable; vehicle footprints, and average transaction prices, seem to climb year after year.
Ultimately, though, automakers wouldn’t be building ever-larger, ever-cushier vehicles if people didn’t buy them, and whether we’re all going soft or we’re hooked on easy credit and 96-month auto loans, we’ve been buying them buy the lotfull. Even when stripped-down versions of mainstream vehicles are made available, they're hardly volume sellers. Salesmen might try to upsell us, but it only works because, at least in the aggregate, we want to be upsold.
There’s a psychological aspect at play here, and it’s key to understanding both the failure of the Nano and our purchasing tastes right here at home. No matter where in the world you live, a car is a huge, important purchase -- in a developing market like India, a buyer might be the first person in their family to ever get the keys to a brand-new vehicle. What type of vehicle it is says a lot about you, even if you don’t consider yourself a hardcore enthusiast. So who in their right mind would want that vehicle to look and feel like it was designed and built with cheapness as the primary design directive?
There's nothing wrong with a set of cheap wheels, but a new car that's main claim to fame is its pervasive cheapness is a losing proposition. No one aspires to poverty-spec transportation. That’s something that’s apparently as true in India as it is here in the United States, and it’s something Tata learned the hard way with the little Nano.
Read more: The Tata Nano failed because nobody aspires to own a cheap car | Autoweek
