What can Tata's Nano ($2500 car) teach Detroit? | Hacker News Reader

What can Tata's Nano ($2500 car) teach Detroit?

businessweek.com

16 pointsbrkumar30 comments

America's Big 3 automakers have been lazy and complacent for years. They haven't made substantial increases in fuel efficiency in decades, and preferred to sue California to fight the zero-emission vehicle law rather than sell more electric cars. They take tons of handouts from the government (hydrogen research, hybrid research, bailout money, etc.) yet lose millions per day.

Bottom line: they don't deserve to be in business.

Even if Tata's Nano is $5k, I would buy one.

Actually I was surprised when I found out that Ford has actually made incredible increases in fuel efficiency, but they did it all before people started caring about fuel efficiency and they've never shook off the reputation of being a gas guzzler.

Let me put it this way, if Ford used the same amount of fuel (compared to other vehicle makers' vehicles) as 20 years ago then I don't think they would have lasted through the insane gas prices last summer.

Your two statements seem at odds - You want less pollution, but you're happy for hordes of people to buy a new, polluting car - especially one which doesn't have the same emission standards. e.g. It's catalytic converter isn't nearly as efficient as western cars.

Maybe we should be getting out of cars altogether and invest in the public transport system.

Maybe we should be getting out of cars altogether and invest in the public transport system.

Agreed. We need to start treating cars like other harmful habits, like smoking and gambling, and tax the hell out of them. We also need to eliminate fares on our public transportation systems. (Nobody's going to take the bus a few blocks to the store when it costs $2.25. But I bet they'll take it when they can just get on for free.)

Anyway, I bet that this will not happen in my lifetime.

There's a "downtown zone" in Minneapolis, where bus travel just costs $0.50. People will definitely take the bus a few blocks to shop at Target for $0.50 each way. I do it and I observe lots of others doing it. (The markup in the local corner stores definitely makes it worth it!)

This sounds cool - but I'd ask - if it's so cheap, why not just make it free?

Would cut the cost of ticketing, speed things up, etc, etc.

As far as I know, there's no tickets for the $0.50 downtown zone. Just drop two quarters in. There may be a way for the wireless fare card (Go To card) to pay that, but I don't know. I just get a roll of quarters from the bank when I need it, and I walk to/from work half the time.

I like the autonomy of being able to travel where I want, when I want, as long as I am willing to pay the fuel and maintenance costs necessary to get there. I don't trust the benevolence of the central planners to design a system that includes everywhere I want to go, especially since many central planners have shown horrible sense in designing transportation systems.

Actually here in Ontario I've seen plenty of people take the bus for $2.75, but then minimum wage is being increased this year to near $10 an hour and that includes tip-paying and commissioned jobs.

There's also considerable discounts. When you pay to get on the bus you get a transfer, which stays valid for a minimum of 90 minutes. Also the bus passes are considerably well priced if you use the bus more than 10 times in a week. So if you're using it to get to and from work and then also to do all your grocery shopping and such, it can get down to as little as $0.50 a trip. Supposedly they're also including tax credits for using it, although they don't seem to want to publish the info on how.

> America's Big 3 automakers have been lazy and complacent for years.

That might be decades instead of years. I am driving a 2000 Buick Centry (on loan while my current car is in the shop) and it's like stepping into a time machine. The feel, controls, interior and style is almost identical to the 1978 Buick Lasabre I learned to drive as a teen.

I'm interested to drive a newer Buick to see if they changed anything for the 2009 model.

Despite the question in the headline of this article, there is very little actionable advice. "Get closer to the customer" is about the best teaching the author can come up with.

There has been a lot of talk about this $2500 car, but everything I've read (in articles with actual data) indicate that there is no way to sell the car for $2500 and cover the cost of raw materials plus assembly/shipping. This is even with the concept of the dealer doing some of the final assembly. Then you have to offset R&D costs, and the other overhead of trying to run an automaker.

A car at a sub-$5,000 pricepoint might work in India, where the regulations are much less stringent than in the US. But, to imply that there is any great new innovation here that other automakers (I don't see Toyota with a $5,000 vehicle, either) have missed is somewhat of a stretch.

As pointed by business week(via trak.in), the innovations made by Tata Nano are:

   1. The car was built from ground up.
   2. The supply chain was simplified by making the suppliers partners.
   3. Shipping the whole car as kits for the downstream distributors to assemble, thus reducing several costs.
   4. The key success factor for Tata Nano project was price. The price was fixed and everything else just worked around it.

Agreed, regulations are less stringent in India. However, price is an innovation. I can argue that a retrofitted Tata Nano will cost no more then $5000 for US market. So, there is ample room for innovation.

Given Detroit's record, the lesson they might take is:

    We need to hire more lobbyists to work on those pesky safety regs

Do you think this is the first car to be built from the "ground up" in the last 50 years?

Supply chains have been squeezed and simplified for the last several decades. It's not uncommon for all automakers to meet with suppliers and work with them to offset R&D costs and outsource the design and manufacture of various components.

The kitting of pieces isn't new either. One example of this is the Dodge Viper. It's been ~12 years since I was close to the process, but something like 80% of the Viper was built by various suppliers. Those suppliers shipped the pieces to Dodge for final assembly, but the Viper factor was little more than a dozen guys with air ratchets. Yes, I'm exaggerating slightly, but not by much.

And I still have not seen anything that says Tata makes even $1 in profit off that $2500 car. This project seems about as realistic that the $10 "laptop" people were talking about coming out of India also.

It's an India-only car. It would be a death trap on American roads, and so Detroit has really nothing to learn from them. Detroit always had well-staffed marketing departments to tell them what to do, and for the most part it worked. The problems were always elsewhere. It's just a liberal fantasy that Americans want caskets with wheels.

2500 dollars will get me a decent used car.

You should at the specs really.

The last time I read its review during a local auto-showin my place, the middle class guys would probably go for a revised version of the good old Maruti-800 car which costs around $5000 approx and has the basic safety features that a car requires (and also A/C and other optionals). But Nano doesn't even have a front bumper.

So as you said it's really just a casket on wheels that people should avoid buying (what's a car without it's basic safety features).

I'm not much into auto, but I guess there's a govt team that reviews cars manufactured in India. So if that team ever reviews such a car, it should presumably fail the safety test (so guess that the Tata guys 'might have' bribed them).

"Nano" is not meant to compete with Toyota/Honda/GM. Tata Nano offers an alternative to 2-wheeler owners to own a car. Also, Nano is good candidate to replace India's 3-wheeler auto-rickshaws. India's emission norms are based on euro-emission norms. So they are no as lenient as perceived. Moreover, This car is meant to be used for intra-city transport. The speed here is around 30-50km/hr. At such a speed, it is less likely to have fatal accidents. What must be appreciated is Ratan Tata's ambitious vision and excellent execution by Tata Motors to achieve their goal.

> India's emission norms are based on euro-emission norms.

I didn't notice that when I lived there. It was hard to breath in busy intersections. As a European I'm quite sure that isn't happening here.

But the standards are probably different for old vs. newly produced vehicles.

> I'm not much into auto, but I guess there's a govt team that reviews cars manufactured in India.

Why would you think that India's safety standards would be the same as the US? Why would you think that they should be? (Americans and Indians have different amounts of "not car" risks. Spending money to make India's "car risks" the same as the US would not make much difference to the total risk in India and would use resources that could be used to reduce said total risks.)

Okay, so plus ten for style but minus several million for good thinking.

The Maruti-800 is a stripped down, fuel efficient car that anyone with decent enough job should be able to afford. The Nano might be good for small towns, but for places like New Delhi, anything less than an 800 is not viable. One of the biggest objections to the Nano has been a lack of safety. The last I heard, even the screws TATA were using were made of plastic.

Also, this car still isn't available for purchase yet. I wonder why the article is touting it as a success. The OLPC was suppossed to be big, but I don't really see it changing lives.

BTW, there's a cheap electric car already available for purchase in India, called the Reva. It has been pretty successful, and you see a lot of them these days. Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reva

Yo Bikes are also a huge success, probably more successful than any other electric vehicle. Here: http://yobykes.in/

That's not to say the Nano doesn't make me go "Ooh ... shiny.".

I've been told that the Indian middle class will prefer a regular car. But this certainly beats a scooter.

I have a Vespa. I'd love a covered motorcycle. It could be electric, because I have no plans on going long distances. Solar panels on such a small vehicle might actually work quite well. They could unfold from the sides to take up the same area as the roof of a sedan.

I don't think that area (of solar panels) would be sufficient to generate any serious charge.

Good sun in an ideal case is around 1kw/m2. Whereas, a scooter output will be around 10kw (?).

So naturally depends on how much area you really want to invest in. But I'd say 1m2 would be the maximum for a fold-out on a scooter.

With the losses, less ideal sun, the weight of the batteries and the solar panels - not sure this would add up as a viable solution... You'd need to be charging for a day or two just to get an hour's output.

A plug-in option probably more viable.

The model would be quick trips, rarely more than 30 minutes. Parking for the day in a lot at work, for example, would be more than enough to get home.

I'd also want a plug-in option for nighttime charging.

I think 1m2 is a very low estimate. Keep in mind I'm describing a covered bike.

I live in Massachusetts, where it should be a crime to buy solar panels, given the dearth of sun. If I lived in SoCal, Nevada, or Arizona, this project would be very workable.

If you're commuting like that, then just put the panels on your house - and plug the bike in.

Having the portability of the solar panels doesn't seem necessary if it's just a down-the-road commuter.

My calculations (http://daniellefong.com/2008/11/15/tick-tock/) give about 4 kwhr per 100 miles of city driving without regenerative breaking at about a 70% efficiency. Most of the US ranges between 2 to 4 kwhr a day of impinging sunlight - let's call it 3. High efficiency PV panels are about 30% efficient, so this is about 1 kwhr per m^2 of charge per day. This would give about 25 miles of city driving, which is well in the range of many urban commutes, but not most. To do better you need regenerative braking or higher efficiencies or more solar panels or all three.

Thanks!

So if you add in the weight of the panels, and the occasional patch of cloudy days - I think it might be a bit marginal... Would you agree?

I hadn't really considered regenerative braking. I can see how it would be useful in a place like San Francisco, but I'd wonder how effective it would be in places like NY (where you need to slam on the brakes instead of just curb your speed).

I recall reading about a mine in Peru (?) that used regenerative braking on all their hauling vehicles. They were all hooked up via a quite clever bumper-car style grid. When one was going downhill, it was helping power something going uphill.

Apparently the regenerative braking in that case resulted >50% efficiency - which seemed like a very good figure to me. Do you know any figures for cars/bikes/scooters in more regular practice?

To make quick regenerative braking efficient, you need something other than batteries to store the energy -- they can't absorb that much power so quickly. They're working on ultracapacitors, which seem like an expensive solution to me. Our strategy, which is also used by so called hydraulic hybrids (in garbage trucks, most notably, which are constantly stopping and starting), is to compress air during braking: this can be done quite quickly and efficiently, and avoids conversion losses. We were expecting a cycle efficiency of between 70% and 80%. We're not working on vehicle technology at present, though.

An engineer in Michigan did exactly what was just proposed:

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/04/don_dunkees_diy.php

I imagine that in southern California or Arizona, the thing would get substantially more than a 1/2 charge during the day.

Depending on the battery chemistry, this could save a heck of a lot of battery life, even if it didn't provide enough to eliminate plugging in at night.

1/2 charge on a summer's day. So less if it's cloudy and less if it's winter. Maybe a lot less, maybe 40%.

A 1/2 charge seems to be about 1.2kwh. The EVT is rated at 1.5kw. So you might get an hour out of that. Anything more powerful (a typical scooter will be 5-10kw) and you're taking 20,30 minutes a day - with ideal sun.

So, if anything, my previous math was conservative.

Anyway - I'm not disagreeing with the principle - just saying I think there are better ways of going about it... I'd say, just stick with the plug-in and put the solar panels on your house.

I think this guy's commute was about 20 minutes. For high density environments like cities, everyone spreading out their folding solar panels on their parked scooters would be problematic. (I need to post my Florence Italy pics. A line of parked scooters as far as the eye can see -- literally.) So solar panels on the roof of the workplace also look good.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com