Resources:
New Scientist Environmental Blog
The Independent
Green Questions and Answers

I also think this could be a boon for the insurance companies, domestic and foreign. Currently the maximum ownership of a foreign insurance company is 29%. A bill in parliament to increase to 49% has been on the back-burner for years. Maybe a successful mass produced car will help the insurance industry (although I generally despise them).

I agree with Emily, that now is not the time to form a “car-culture” and I have real doubts that it will happen with gas prices in India 10 times that of the US in the 50’s when it formed in the US.

The only issue I see is that quality and safety are reported to be sacrificed when compared to many other cars in order to cut costs. The Indian people tend to be very frugal. They often save up for a long time before making a purchase. It might be hard to sell them on a 2-3 thousand dollar purchase which will only last them for a couple of years.

Logan’s math is amazing - I don’t think we can imagine a world 435 years away in which India’s car consumption reaches American levels. I hope for the ozone’s sake that day that is never reached.

Does anyone else see a budding opportunity to develop a car insurance company in India? My first thought is yes, this is a sector poised for growth! If you could get the government to mandate car insurance (as we do here), you’d be raking in the premiums! Unfortunately, after reading that the manufacturer admits to the use of plastic and glue in place of welded steel, I worry about resulting medical bills from accident-related injuries and have to pass on that business venture idea…

I like the Nano because it is small and therefore uses less natural resources to manufacture. Because of its size it is also less taxing on the environment as it is more fuel efficient than its larger counterparts. Furthermore, cars themselves allow nations to be more productive and this heightened possible level of productivity might in fact be what it takes for us to collectively create a better alternative to gas guzzling automobiles for our transportation needs. For the time being, however, I feel that the mere existance of the Tata Nano is great in allowing consumers to have a less taxing way to get around.

It is easy to bash on the car for its many faults; polution, traffic, accidents, etc. Yet, despite this, it is the preferred form of transportation of those wealthy enough to afford it. This is due to the fact that the car is still the fastest and most conveinent form of transportation. Since this unlikely to change in the near future, reducing the problems associated with the automobile is the next best option.

Using your statistic of 8 in 1,000 Indians owning cars along with an estimated total population from Wikipedia (not exactly academic, I know) of 1.15 billion, there should be approximately 12 million passenger vehicles on Indian roads currently. In the U.S. we drive a whopping 250 million as of 2006 (approximately the same for the European continent). That is nearly 21 times as many vehicles all with notably worse gas mileage than the Tata Nano. With the estimated 1,500 new cars hitting Indian roads per day it would take approximately 435 years for India to reach the same total passenger vehicles as the U.S. today.

I guess my concerns about an Indian “car culture” have a way to go before reaching catastrophic levels. Still, it would be a rather interesting (by which I mean desperately toxic) world if India had the same vehicle ownership rates as the U.S. Approximately 90% of Americans drive a car to work with personal ownership ranging from 75-85% (the statistics I found pulled from several years). If India follows our example they’ll have rush hour traffic totaling over 1 billion cars. Let’s hope the same innovation that conceived the Tata Nano will imagine a better world without it.