Indian Car Company Creates Budget Car, Environmentalists Bitch

The market and an entrepreneur creates opportunities long out of reach for India's people, environmentalists look for excuses to take it away.  I hope Tata Motors makes a fucking fortune.

Tata makes small budget cars, and they think they might have a winner in their new Nano line.  Its a tiny peanut with four seats, a lawnmower motor and wheels, but it would be a huge improvement over what is currently being driven in India.  It will sell for 100K Rupees, which is a bit over $2,500 if the currency exchange widget I put the number through is right...if I'm wrong on that, maybe Tushar'll drop by and correct me.  You won't see it in the US or Europe because it doesn't meet our safety or emissions standards, but it meets all of India's current standards.  Here's a pic of the Nano,

Here's Ratan Tata, chairman of Tata talking about the Nano and the inspiration behind it,

"I observed families riding on two-wheelers - the father driving the scooter, his young kid standing in front of him, his wife seated behind him holding a little baby.

"It led me to wonder whether one could conceive of a safe, affordable, all-weather form of transport for such a family. Tata Motors' engineers and designers gave their all for about four years to realise this goal.

"Today, we indeed have a people's car which is affordable and yet built to meet safety requirements and emission norms, to be fuel efficient and low on emissions. We are happy to present the people's car to India and we hope it brings the joy, pride and utility of owning a car to many families who need personal mobility."

Neat, right?  And while I'm guessing this thing would be a deathtrap in the US, its a huge improvement over there.  Reminds me of a quote from the late Colonel Sanders I saw a while ago,

Feed the poor and get rich or feed the rich and get poor.

Of course, the Colonel has his whiny naysayers...

Tata is doing exactly what the Colonel said there, improving lives by offering a vehicle to people that could never afford one otherwise.  A car gives you much more opportunity, its much easier to go where the work is with the kind of mobility a car provides.  Beyond that, its a thing of pride to own one.

And, as is obligatory with any story where there is progress in bringing a better life to people, there are environmentalists whining and trying to stop it. In this case, they're complaining that its gonna cause more congestion and pollution in India's already congested and polluted cities. 

Now, I'm not dismissing those concerns, congestion, smog and pollution are serious problems in India's big cities already, but c'mon, give your own people some credit, they'll either innovate and create more efficient cars, find a cleaner energy source (or benefit from us or someone else doing the same), or they'll find some way to relieve congestion and pollution, maybe expand into suburbs or whatever an Indian equivalent would be, but I'm sure all the solutions offered would be met with bitching too.  Or maybe Indians at large will accept that pollution and congestion is more than a fair trade-off for not living in abject poverty, and try and work around it.  We have, Europeans have, Japanese have.

The funny part, I bet there are environmentalists who live in the comfort of a US or Western Europe who will have the audacity to bitch about this development.

Posted by: doubleplusundead at 03:31 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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