The New Nano

I'm referring to the car not the ipod. At the Auto Expo in Delhi in January, Tata Motors, one of India's oldest and largest car manufacturers unveiled its One Lakh Car, the Nano. One lakh is 100,000 rupees or about $2,500, making the Nano the cheapest car in the world.

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With work, I've somehow managed to work on several automotive proposals over the last few months, so I've been following the developments around the Nano very closely. There a lot of talk about the Nano before it was unveiled, both positive and negative. Many doubted that it could be done and there was a lot of spectulation that the market price would be much higher than 1 lakh. But as Rata Tatan, Chairman of Tata Group, said, "a promise is a promise," so he delivered a one lakh car.

At the unveiling, Ratan Tata also referred to his personal dream to make automobiles more affordable to the common man and he kept in mind the image of a family of four riding on a two-wheeler - a sight common to anyone who has traveled to India - when envisioning and designing the Nano. The goal is to make cars more affordable and replace two-wheelers with passenger cars for a large part of the population. And now India and the rest of the world have "the People's Car."

A family of four on a motorbike - a common sight in India

If you thought the first family had it bad, at least they are not on a bicycle!

In addition to making an incredibly cheap car, the car meets Indian and global safety standards for crash tests and emissions. And the product was developed entirely in India by Indians, a huge accomplishment for Indian R&D and manufacturing.

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The full impact of the Nano is still unknown, but used car prices are already down in India as people wait for the car to be available on the market in October.