Citizen Power

The tiny Tata car is admittedly cute and compact, and I wish I could have one myself — but only if it were electric.  And why couldn’t it be — it’s small enough and looks lightweight enough to go pretty far on existing battery technology.   Unfortunately, the new small car from the Indian automaker that’s on the market right now is futuristic looking but still runs on gasoline, getting about  54 mpg (very respectable for an old fossil-fuel burning engine) So, it’s a throwback to all the other combustion engines out there.  Overall, I’d say Tata Motors is doing pretty good with emissions compared to other car makers though, especially American ones.  And it’s not a bad car, as cars go.   It’s actually got some room in it.   Tata Motors is also doing well with sales already, as India’s largest automobile company with revenues of US $ 7.2 billion in 2006-2007.

The problems this little car could cause is simply its popularity. Because of it’s incredibly cheap (affordable) price, millions more Indians will be able to afford the car, adding potentially huge amounts of pollution to the air. Now, I don’t begrudge anyone a car of their own.  Many Americans think it’s their birthright to have a car, which to many of us equals freedom.  A lot of people in big cities don’t have or need cars, but in the midwest it’s almost impossible to imagine getting around without a car, and no doubt it’s that way in every large country.   What the small Tata car will do is put millions more cars on the roads in India, possibly hundreds of millions more cars. That might lead to a new air quality problem and of course all those extra millions of cars will put more CO2 into the atmosphere.  Now that the Tata is a cheap new car at around $2,500, the average middle class Indian citizen can probably afford one.  This is the problem with cars world-wide as they get less expensive — more of them are sold, and that’s not necessarily a good thing. That’s capitalism!  (which is not necessarily a good thing).

There is good news though. Tata Motors has announced that it may launch its Indica Vista EV all-electric car in Europe by the end of this year. The Indica will be capable of travelling 200km (125miles) on a full charge and accelerate from 0-60kph (0-38mph) in less than ten seconds –  like anyone really wants to do that.

This all might upset GM, because they were going to introduce their new small-ish European electric vehicle, the Opel Ampera, by 2011.  I still think GM needs to go back to building railcars, because they will never produce the cars we need in the U.S. fast enough. There is the Volt electric car, of course, but it needs to be half what it is now in price by next year, or they just won’t sell very many.

The following is (probably) not a Tata car, but just a fun picture of the smallest car I have ever seen.

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