GigaOM » Tata Nano

The future of cars for the next billion people

Katie Fehrenbacher — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 08:00:40 +0000

Tata Nano

While electric cars are the subject of much media attention, the future of cars for the next billion people to enter the middle class on the planet could be bare-bones, low-cost cars like Tata’s $2,500 Nano. During my trip to Delhi this week with the Geeks on a Plane tech travel group, I saw a couple of Tata Nanos driving around the streets.

The car has been a symbol of India’s economic rise and rapidly growing middle class, and Tata is a massive conglomerate in India that makes everything from cars to telecommunications to real estate. The car originally was called the “One-Lakh car,” (one lakh equals 100,000 rupees, or about $2,100) when it was launched in March of 2009, though the price of the so-called “People’s car” has risen in recent years.

At the 2012 Delhi Auto Expo in January, Tata plans to show off the Nano Diesel, according to media reports, and the diesel version will cost more than the gas-powered version. The 2012 Nano comes in a whole bunch of colors like Mojito Green and Papaya Orange.

Tata Nano

What the rise of the people’s car would mean

Despite the Nano’s tiny size and fuel efficiency compared to most cars on the roads, low-cost cars like these will make owning a fossil fuel-burning car much more accessible than ever before. Personal car ownership could soar in developing countries like India and China with these types of cars and that unfortunately means greenhouse gas emissions from this global fleet will rise as well.

If the diesel version of the Nano takes off, there’s the possibility it could burn biodiesel. The gas-powered version could burn ethanol with the addition of the flex fuel feature.

However, the Tata Nano itself has struggled. As of the beginning of this year, Tata had only sold 71,000 Nanos, which was only 40 percent of the projected sales target, according to Forbes. Potential customers, many of which are motorcycle and scooter owners in India, just haven’t switched over to a four-wheeler that is a couple of times more expensive than the two-wheelers they drive around town. And potential car owners who want a higher-end car see the Nano as the very base in personal vehicles. Tata has been attempting a major marketing campaign to revive the brand.

Electric cars are a more difficult sell

When we were walking around Old Delhi this week, I also spotted one of the Reva electric cars. Reva, which recently sold 55 percent of its shares to Mahindra Group last year, says it has 4,000 electric cars on the roads, and that’s after it was founded in 1994.

Reva

Compared to the bare-bones price of the Nano, the higher price of the battery-powered car is the reason there are fewer on the roads. Reva’s various versions can cost between $7,000 to $13,000 and higher. Reva has been building a new factory in Bangalore expected to be completed by the end of 2011 with a capacity to produce 30,000 units per year.

Reva

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Lorax Motor Works: Trying to Tackle the Tata Nano, One Electric Trike at a Time

Josie Garthwaite — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 07:00:01 +0000

Bootstrapped startup Lorax Motor Works has a love-hate relationship with India’s Tata Motors. The team, based in Hood River, Ore., and working on a three-wheeled electric “human utility vehicle,” wants to follow Tata’s lead in supplying ultra-low-cost vehicles in developing countries. But as founders Adam Kravetz, Aaron Blake and Tris Tarantino told us in an interview in San Francisco this week, they don’t like the idea of millions of people who don’t currently own cars driving the Tata Nano, which still runs on gasoline.

Lorax’s Hauler combines bicycle pedal power with a battery pack that can be charged via a solar panel, or by plugging in at a standard outlet. Blake describes it as a “water buffalo replacement” for carrying up to 300 pounds of water, food, farming supplies or other cargo (groceries and a couple laptops for Lorax’s initial target market: eco-minded city dwellers). It’s about as fast as a trotting water buffalo — the electric motor can power it up to 20 MPH — and is priced on the high-end at $2,660 for the basic plug-in version, or $3,260 for the model that comes with the solar charging kit.

In that respect, Lorax and Tata aren’t exactly going head to head. The Nano, the so-called “people’s car,” is a four-seater that has a max speed of about 65 MPH and a price of about $2,000 in India.

That isn’t stopping the Lorax team from aiming for part of the Nano’s market. But the group, which met at Cornell and came to California this week to present at the university’s entrepreneur network’s Silicon Valley mini-conference on the future of automobiles, has a lot of work to do to achieve their goals. Or even quit their day jobs, which involve financial services, engineering and fire fighting.

To ramp up production, and potentially one day produce larger electric cars like the Aptera 2e, Lorax is trying to raise venture capital or funding from a philanthropic venture like Google.org. Kravetz tells us that Lorax hopes to use a first round of funding to help finance efforts to sign on U.S. bike shops as dealers, starting in California, with the goal of winning over green-minded consumers who could use the Hauler for urban commutes that require more carrying capacity than a bicycle offers.

But Lorax has designed the Hauler to offer benefits specifically for developing economies, too. The battery packs and electronics “pop off” the Hauler easily, so they can be used to store and provide energy for rural buildings. In Kathmandu, Nepal, the team is working on a small deal with an adventure tourism company drawn to the potential for green marketing, but also as a way to reduce vulnerability to events like the gas dealer strikes that halted Nepal’s fuel supply back in 2006, and again this summer.

Obviously Lorax is a very early stage venture and who knows how far they’ll get. The startup represents just one of a growing number of ventures hoping to carve out a piece of the market where Tata has been racing (despite delays) to grab an early lead. And with prices in the thousands of dollars, the Hauler is not geared for the mainstream, although Lorax hopes wealthier, zealous early adopters in the U.S. will help fund deployment in developing markets (in combination with grants from NGOs).

lf Lorax is able to find a demographic that wants a sturdy, several thousand-dollar electric hauler, larger vehicle manufacturers may be able to serve that market better — or at least faster, by driving down costs and using their global reach to expand more quickly. But according to Adam, it wouldn’t be a total loss, since “We’re trying to get a revolution started here.”

In the end, Lorax is putting a new spin on a strategy about as old as the automobile itself. By targeting “rural small farmers,” he said Lorax is taking a cue from Ford’s Model T, initially developed with that same group in mind. The Hauler “even looks kinda like it,” Blake said: “chunky, gnarly, overbuilt.”

Photos credit Lorax Motor Works

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Daily Sprout

Josie Garthwaite — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 20:30:25 +0000

Bill Gates Gets Into Hybrid Car Tech: Microsoft founder Bill Gates appears as a principal applicant on a new patent for a smart engine that could theoretically switch between electricity and gas power “in response to actual or predicted operating conditions.” — Fast Company

Uh-Oh Nano: A new report from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety says three minicars — the Honda Fit, Toyota Yaris and Smart Fortwo — fared poorly in 80 mph head-on collision tests with midsize models. Solution: Cut speed limits and reduce horsepower. — New York Times

Offshore Wind Industry Wants You, UK: The UK will fail to meet its legally binding target of sourcing 15 percent of energy from renewables by 2020 and miss out on tens of thousands of green jobs unless the government helps build out the offshore wind industry, according to a new Institute for Public Policy Research report. — Guardian

Brazil Renewable Portfolio Set to Slip: Brazil gets 46 percent of its energy from renewable sources, compared with the average 13 percent for the rest of the world. But new thermoelectric plants are scheduled to come online and increase the country’s reliance on fossil fuels. — Cleantech Group

Fiat + Chrysler = Cars for the Masses?: A Fiat-Chrysler linkup could bolster Chrysler’s lineup with Fiat’s fuel-efficient cars — and give the Detroit company guidance from the Fiat CEO who sees automaking as “a Wal-Mart industry” rather than a luxury business. — Washington Post

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Rise of the Itty-Bitty Car: How Green Are the New Uber Compacts?

Josie Garthwaite — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 22:00:58 +0000

The media blitz for the New York International Auto Show doesn’t kick into high gear until tomorrow, but automakers are itching to get their new toys out ahead of time. Among the concept cars slated to debut at the show this week is a Toyota Scion “micro-subcompact” that the company has said represents “a new segment for the brand aimed toward the growing urbanization trend.” Wondering what that looks like? Think Smart Fortwo, Tata Nano — or Toyota iQ, the model now sold in Europe and Japan that may get a Scion badge for the U.S. market and is rumored to be the concept Scion plans to unveil tomorrow.

While these models seem downright beefy compared with General Motors and Segway’s new PUMA concept, they’re worlds away from the 16 mpg Hummers of yesteryear. But they also run on gasoline. So does the new breed of itty bitty cars represent a way to prolong our reliance on fossil fuels and distract from work on cleaner technologies — or do their reduced material needs and improved fuel economy make subcompacts shining examples of green transport?

Fuel economy gains aren’t as big as you might expect for these slimmed down vehicles. The most recent U.S. EPA fuel economy ratings give the 2009 Fortwo coupe a combined 36 mpg (33 mpg city, 41 mpg highway). For comparison, the 2009 Toyota Prius gets 46 mpg (48 city, 45 highway) and the Honda Civic comes in at 29 mpg (25 city, 36 highway). According to the EPA, this translates to about a one-ton difference in annual carbon dioxide emissions, with the Fortwo emitting 1.1 tons more than the Prius and 1.2 tons less than the Civic.

There’s potential for much better mileage with these models — Toyota’s iQ has a whopping 54.1 mpg rating under Japan’s system, although it likely won’t test as high on the EPA scale.

It seems the greater potential, in terms of advancing the auto industry toward cleaner technology, lies in what these models might spawn. Based on Daimler, Tata Motors and Toyota’s gameplans for their smallest models, the latest subcompacts could pave the road to a much greener generation of vehicles: namely, electric versions of the Fortwo (slated for a U.S. pilot rollout in 2010), Nano (Tata’s entry in this year’s X Prize competition) and iQ (pictured; displayed in concept form as the “FT-EV” at the Detroit Auto Show in January and appearing again at this week’s New York Auto Show). Here’s hoping for progress on shrinking the battery packs — these cars will be awfully cozy with a hefty pack in the back seat.

Photo courtesy New York International Auto Show; MPG graphic courtesy fueleconomy.gov

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Apple’s Marketing and Sales Teams May Need an Update

Tom Reestman — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 13:40:14 +0000

In case you hadn’t figured it out by now, I like the new iPod shuffle. So much so that I ordered one (in black) the day they were announced.

I bought it online since shipping and engraving are free. I lose the instant gratification of the Apple Store, but I gain the personalization of engraving. (Though I admit it was challenging to come up with an engraving because there’s a small limit on letters.) Shortly after ordering, I got a confirmation email saying it would ship in three to five business days. So far, so good, now all I can do is wait. But look what I received today: I think somebody goofed. I mean, it’s nice that Apple thought of me and all that, but I have a couple of issues with this email:

“We hope you’re enjoying your iPod.” Well, no, I’m not. Because I don’t have it yet. In fact, unless you’re hiding something from me, you haven’t even shipped it yet.
The picture is of an antiquated shuffle, not the shiny new one I ordered. I mean, the thing has the controls on it instead of using remote headphone controls. Remember back when we used to control these things that way? That was ages ago. You know, before the Enlightenment.
The email makes no mention of the new shuffle at all.

Apple, you should get a note to the appropriate groups to have your canned email updated ASAP. And maybe not send it until you think the recipient actually has the item in question, OK? Oh, and maybe include a reference to the actual item that was purchased? Thanks anyway… I guess… Man, if they ship me that green one I’m gonna so go ballistic.

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Tata Doubles Nano Investment, Nails Down Production Timeline

Josie Garthwaite — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 15:00:57 +0000

Indian auto giant Tata Motors plans to throw an additional $435 million at production of its Tata Nano, the compact car unveiled in prototype last year with the promise of a price tag low enough to revolutionize transportation in emerging markets. With a lightweight design and high fuel economy (54 mpg, Tata claimed), it was envisioned as a precursor for low-cost electric and micro-hybrid models. While the ultra-cheap auto project has stalled, renewed investment could be the jumpstart Tata needs to get efficient cars out of the planning stages.

The investment announced today will pay for a new manufacturing facility for the $2,500 Nano, with production slated to begin in late February. That’s a 4-month delay from the initially slated rollout, which has proceeded by stops and starts amid fierce land disputes. The spending represents a doubling of Tata’s total investment in the Nano project since its launch just over a year ago, Cleantech Group reports. (Tata deserted a 90-percent complete factory in August after violent protests from local farmers who said they were forced to give up land for the project.) According to the Times of India, Tata will have help from the government, which is letting the company buy the land in eight yearly installments, beginning after production takes off.

Here’s the new timeline: Tata expects existing plants to produce the first 7,000 vehicles by the end of March, with production of the so-called “people’s car” ramping to 80,000 over the next year. If the new factory opens as scheduled in the first quarter of the 2010-2011 fiscal year, Tata said it will reach its original full-scale annual production target of 150,000 Nanos.

The schedule shows remarkably few changes from the original plan, considering the tumult Tata Motors and its parent, Tata Group, have endured over the past year. Then again, it wouldn’t be the first automaker to miss its own revised deadlines.

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Nano 1.0 Still MIA, But Tata's in Talks for a Micro-Hybrid

Josie Garthwaite — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 19:30:43 +0000

Tata Motors wants to build a micro-hybrid version of the Tata Nano, the $2,500 “people’s car” unveiled last year and slated (for now) to enter production in 2009. While the Indian auto giant has encountered a series of delays for the Nano — most of them tied to disputes over land slated for factory construction — it has entered talks with German auto parts manufacturer Bosch to supply micro-hybrid, or start-stop, systems, India’s CNBC-TV18 reports.

Micro-hybrids are not true hybrid fuel systems, but Bosch says its technology can boost in-town fuel economy by up to 8 percent: Gasoline alone propels the vehicle, but the engine shuts down when it’s at rest. Electricity from the battery instantly restarts the engine when the driver hits the accelerator.

Two years ago, Bosch forecast that start-stop technology would appear in 1 out of every 5 cars by 2015. So far, BMW, Mini, Fiat, and Kia have come on board. While the system represents a relatively inexpensive add-on, it would add up to 6,000 rupee, or about $125 to the the price tag for the Nano — not insignificant for a car whose chief selling point is affordability. If Tata can ramp to the 100,000 annual production it originally envisioned for the Nano, the deal could be a good score for Bosch. Like Tata, the company has idled factories in recent months in response to slumping global demand.

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In India, Either Buy iPhones or Get a Family Car

Om Malik — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 18:42:18 +0000

OK, now I know I have your attention! In India, the 3G iPhone goes on sale today and people are lining up to buy a device that is seriously, and I mean seriously, expensive. Bharti Airtel and Vodafone (India) are the two carriers who are selling the device in India.

On the Bharti Airtel network, the device is going to cost between $730 and $830 dollars, depending on the device you buy. Furthermore, the device is locked to Bharti’s special network. So for a family of three (mom, dad and a kid), the 3G iPhones will cost around the same as Tata Nano, the $2,300 people’s car that launched earlier this year.

The high cost isn’t stopping people from wanting the device. About 200,000 phones have been pre-ordered. “I must assure you that we are not making any profits by selling the iPhone 3G. We are only providing network services and the prices have been fixed by Apple,” Sanjay Kapoor, president, mobility, Bharti Airtel told a local blog. More than 30,000 unlocked first generation iPhones are already running on Bharti’s network.

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