Friday, January 11, 2008

Cheaps cars for everyone?

While I appreciate it is ridiculous for anyone in North America, where the myth of the open road originated and where the average car current gets worse mileage than a 1976 Datsun, to complain about automotive developments in other parts of the world, it is hard not to wonder whether the release of $2500 Nano will be a disaster for the planet, not to mention India's already crowded roads and hospitals, destroying whatever naive hope that the developing world can leapfrog past our car-based culture to an efficient, modern transportation system.

At least the Nano gets 47 mpg (and isn't made out of clay).

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

For another take.

John Mashey said...

Weirdly enough, I think this is amongst the lesser of the world's problems:

a) I don't think India yet has the road infrastructure to support a huge uptick in number of cars.

b) I think it will take a while to build the cars.

c) and I think Peak Oil will start biting (everybody except oil producers who subsidize it for their people) big-time before much of a) and b) happen... According to CIA Factbook, India was already importing 2M barrels/day in 2005.

On the other hand, this size car might well get to be a reasonable platform for EV or PHEV, which are far more useful in India's urban areas anyway.