The auto industry as well as auto consumers have been anticipating the unveiling of Tata Motors' small car. The automaker announced last year that they will be manufacturing the world's cheapest car which they will be aiming to sell to millions of Indian customers. Recently, the Tata Nano was unveiled by the automaker.
Ratan Tata, the chairman of Tata Motors, said during the unveiling of the Nano that he has seen families traveling on scooters which is unsafe for them. Thus, he came up with the idea to develop and manufacture small and affordable cars which will be within the reach of many families in the Asian country.
"There has always been some sort of unconscious urge to do something for the people of India and transport has been an area of interest," said Tata. "As urbanization gathers pace, personal transport has become a big issue, especially since mass transport is often not available or is of poor quality. Two-wheelers - with the father driving, the elder child standing in front and the wife behind holding a baby - is very much the norm in this country. In that form two-wheelers are a relatively unsafe mode of transporting a family. The two-wheeler image is what got me thinking that we needed to create a safer form of transport," continued Mr. Tata.
Tata also revealed that he first tried to join force with an industry association to develop the original small car. Hew had envisioned a collaboration between Asian countries but it never happened. "I got in touch with an industry association and suggested that we join forces and produce what, at that point, I called an Asian car: large volumes, many nations involved, maybe with different countries producing different sets of parts... Nobody took the idea seriously, nobody responded," he relayed.
The vehicle was developed under not so normal conditions. Tata said that the Nano was not supposed to be an Rs1-lakh car or a hundred thousand rupee car. "I was interviewed by the Financial Times at the Geneva Motor Show and I talked about this future product as a low-cost car. I was asked how much it would cost and I said about Rs1 lakh," Tata said. "The next day the Financial Times had a headline to the effect that the Tatas are to produce a Rs100,000 car. My immediate reaction was to issue a rebuttal, to clarify that that was not exactly what I had said. Then I thought, I did say it would be around that figure, so why don't we just take that as a target. When I came back our people were aghast, but we had our goal."
The Nano will be made available to consumers by the latter part of 2008. The said vehicle is made from high quality parts which can be compared to auto parts such as .
