By Parveen Chopra, IANS
New York : Widely reporting the unveiling Thursday of the Nano in India, the US media has generally admired the Tatas’ technical feat in producing the world’s cheapest car and speculated on its impact on the auto world while raising concerns over the environmental effect of the inexpensive cars crowding Indian roads.
The launch of the car by Ratan Tata at the Delhi auto expo made news in almost all the newspapers here, was featured on evening network news watched by over 30 million viewers, and had the Internet abuzz.
Many media outlets had their own correspondents at the launch; others carried news agency despatches.
The New York Times had pre-empted the rest of the media by scooping general features of the Nano a couple of days before its launch, compiling information from suppliers of parts on how Tata was able to cut costs – and corners.
But the Times chose to wrap the launch itself in a story singling out chaotic driving conditions in India. It too quoted Pachauri as being critical of the small car boom, questioning Tata Motors in particular for devoting itself to building cheap cars rather than efficient mass transportation systems.
The criticism of the car’s potential environmental impact was instantly counteracted on the Internet, largely by readers with Indian names.
On the International Herald Tribune’s ‘Business of Green’ blog, one Subrahmanyam reacted with this post: “We should appreciate the innovation as a great achievement for a small car being available to common man of the developing world. India still happens to be much lower in the rung among the countries which produce emissions.”
Forbes also thought along similar lines. Using Nano’s launch to survey world’s cheapest cars, it said the Nano may open the door for middle-class families in India to get behind the wheel of a vehicle for the first time.
Business magazines also took notice of the fact that Tata’s plan to sell one million Nano cars is pushing many international automakers to try to meet the challenge by producing small low cost cars of their own.
BusinessWeek reported. “Ford, Nissan, Fiat, Suzuki, Renault are all planning to increase production in the Nano space over the next couple of years.”
“For millions of people in the developing world, Tata Motor’s new $2,500 four-door subcompact – the world’s cheapest car – may yield a transportation revolution with as great an impact as Henry Ford’s Model T, which rolled off an assembly line one century ago,” the Associated Press report began.
AP also put out a chart comparing the specifics of the two cars. Nano generates a horsepower of 33, has two cylinders, a top speed of 60 mph, and gives 50 miles per gallon. Ford T’s horsepower was 20, it had 4 cylinders, a top speed of 45 mph, and only gave 13-21 miles per gallon. Ford T cost $850 in 1908 (about $19,000 today).
AP also highlighted environment fears, quoting Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the Nobel-prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as “having nightmares” about the prospects of the low-cost car.
The news agency carried Ratan Tata’s promise that the car with spare features met India’s emission and safety norms.
At a time when the US economy is looking down, petrol prices are shooting up, and the cheapest available car is Chevrolet Aveo at $10,300 in a stripped down version, ordinary Americans naturally evinced interest in Nano though the car may never be sold here.
On Popular Mechanics magazine’s website, one reader said: “I will buy it today. How much would it cost to transport it to USA?”
Another called Nano “The death of Detroit”.
For the record, Detroit, the Mecca of auto industry in a car-crazy country, has fallen on bad times. Early last year, Toyota of Japan toppled US giant General Motors from the top global sales spot for the first time.
Popular Mechanics’ own correspondent even liked Nano’s looks. “Cute-sleek, simple and glassy, a pleasant pod car straight out of 1960s sci-fi.”
Autoblog reported that the car has created quite a stir worldwide. “We’ve actually been getting emails all day from people the world over asking how they can buy one.”
The blog also reminded readers that the new “people’s car” is “brought to you by the same folks who hope to sell you Jaguars in the not-so-distant future”.
“We’d say that if all goes as planned, Tata’s got just about every possible demographic covered,” the blog quipped.
There were more quips. A blogger advised Detroit to buy a modified version from Tata. “Think of the advantages. If the car gets a flat tire, the driver can just pick the vehicle up and put it in his pocket.”