[sustran] 'World's Cheapest Car Environmentally Costly'

[Todd Edelman, Green Idea Factory]

Hi everyone,

There is some stuff here I have not seen in other reports... note which 
political party is giving support... and some of the analysis is quite 
clever....

- T

***

INDIA: 'World's Cheapest Car Environmentally Costly'
By Praful Bidwai

*NEW DELHI, Jan 16 (IPS) - Nothing has generated as much hyperbole in 
the global automobile industry in recent years as the unveiling, last 
week, of an ultra-cheap bare-bones car made by the Tatas, India’s steel 
and engineering giant. *

Ppriced at 2,500 US dollars, the 'Nano' is arguably the world’s cheapest 
four-wheeled passenger vehicle.

However, the ‘dream car’ may turn out to be an ecological nightmare and 
a not-so-safe driving machine, without airbags to protect riders or 
anti-lock braking systems. It could prove a menace to India’s already 
congested roads, and a source of enormous pollution and of health 
damage, besides becoming a drain on public resources.

Above all, it will set back the all-important fight against global 
warming, in which the Indian government is at best a reluctant partner 
who refuses to accept any time-bound commitment to reduce his greenhouse 
emissions, now growing three times faster than the world average.

According to management experts, the car has created a new paradigm of 
"frugal engineering" and will trigger breathtaking innovations in 
manufacturing technology in the global automobile industry based on 
severe cost-cutting.

Yet, despite stripping the Nano down to its most rudimentary dimensions 
to produce what a United States media presenter termed as "a golf cart 
crossed with a jelly bean", Tata Motors is unlikely to be able to fulfil 
its 2,500 price promise for long.

"In fact, the figure is an introductory offer excluding taxes and local 
duties; on the road, the car will actually cost between 3,310 – 3,819 
dollars,’’ says Dinesh Mohan, a transportation expert and professor of 
biomedical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. 
"And that’s the initial cost of the bare-bones model. Other versions, 
including an air-conditioned model, will cost more."

Tata Motors chairman Ratan Tata has already hinted that the introductory 
price may not last long. "We may not be able to hold the price 
emotionally. We have to understand that steel and tyre prices … are 
rising," he said, while launching the car last week.

He recalled that in 1983, the Maruti 800 car made in India by Suzuki too 
was offered at 1,145 dollars, but the price almost doubled within a year.

The Nano’s ultra-low price tag covers major subsidies offered by the 
Marxist government of West Bengal, where the car will be manufactured. 
According to former state finance minister Ashok Mitra, the subsidies 
(210 million dollars) work out to one-fourth of the car project’s 
initial capital cost.

The Left Front state government has leased 997 acres of land to the 
Tatas virtually free, with no down-payment. It’s also advancing them a 
50 million dollar loan at one percent interest and further granting an 
exemption from the value-added tax for 10 years, amounting to 125 
million dollars.

If the indirect subsidies given to private automobiles through the free 
use of roads and parking space are added, cars like the Nano would no 
longer be ultra-cheap to the point of being ironic.

Hype about "the world’s cheapest car" apart, the Nano is deeply flawed 
because of inadequate safety features and emission standards, say 
environmentalists and experts.

"This car is likely to have low longevity and high maintenance costs,'' 
commented Mohan. ''It already fails the current Western emission and 
safety standards, and will soon fail Indian standards too as India 
adopts the ‘Euro-IV’ emission norms applicable in many European Union 
countries."

The ruthless way the Tatas have pared down the Nano’s costs has meant 
cutting many corners to stay focused on frugality and minimalism.

For instance, the Nano's designers reportedly used a hollow shaft 
instead of a solid beam to connect the steering-wheel to the axle, and 
plastics and adhesives in place of many studs and bolts. The car’s 
low-performance wheel bearings may wear out rapidly beyond 70 kmph.

It has only one windshield wiper instead of two. It uses belt-driven 
continuous variable transmission, which slows down acceleration. To save 
merely ten dollars the suspension was redesigned to eliminate devices 
called actuators, which adjust the angle of the car’s lights to the way 
it’s loaded.

"Such measures are likely to have an impact on the car’s safety, 
sturdiness and durability/longevity," adds Mohan. "Some of it will only 
become apparent once the car has been on the road for a few years. It’s 
premature today to certify that the Nano is safe and reliable."

Tata’s claim that the Nano has passed the crash test and meets the 
national emission standards called Bharat-II and -III has not been 
verified by an independent and competent agency. Besides, Tata himself 
admits that the Nano, as of now, falls short of the Euro-IV standards.

"India should have adopted these norms long ago, but delayed doing so 
under the automobile lobby’s pressure", says Anumita Roychowdhury of the 
Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) an internationally-known green 
lobby in New Delhi.

Euro-IV norms will come into force in India’s major cities in April 2010 
and are considerably stricter than Bharat-II or III, which are 10 to 5 
years behind Europe. For instance, under Euro-IV, sulphur emissions must 
be reduced 35-fold in relation to Bharat-II.

"Similarly, key safety standards are long overdue in India which has 
unacceptably high road accident and casualty rates,'' adds Roychowdhury. 
"They are on their way. These include full-body crash tests -- which 
determine how cars will crumple in collisions, minimising the impact on 
passengers -- airbags and anti-lock braking systems. Implementing them 
will raise the Nano’s claimed costs by 40 to 50 percent."

"It’s not good enough to have safety systems; cars must be frequently 
and rigorously inspected after they have experienced actual roads 
conditions, which often affect the systems that control emissions. This 
rarely happens in India,’’ Mohan said. Michael Walsh, a pollution 
consultant and former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulator, 
has been quoted as saying that a car as cheap as the Nano is likely to 
lack the complex technology needed to maintain its initial level of 
emissions, and it could soon produce four to five times its initial 
pollution levels. "It strikes me as impossible that such a vehicle will 
be a very clean vehicle" over its lifetime, he told The New York Times.

The Tata car will set a trend under which industry will take advantage 
of India’s existing poor emission standards and rush to produce new 
vehicles before better standards are in place.

Scooter manufacturer Bajaj Auto has already announced that it will make 
a 3,000 dollar car in collaboration with Renault. Volkswagen, Nissan and 
General Motors are also considering plans to make stripped-down cars 
priced between the Nano and the Maruti 800.

The addition of these vehicles will further slow down traffic in Indian 
cities--whose speed has considerably decreased, and in some case halved 
in recent years.

It will greatly add to pollution, which has reached critical levels in 
57 percent of Indian cities and is generating a health havoc, with 
disorders ranging from respiratory illnesses and hypertension to obesity.

India and China are emerging as leaders in low-cost car manufacture and 
consumption. In India, forecasts a consultancy firm, an additional 30 
million households will be ready to buy a small car by 2010 --20 times 
the present market size.

By 2013, India’s car market will be annually growing at 14.5 percent, 
and China’s at just over eight percent. By 2020, some forecasts say, 
more than 150 million Indians and 140 million Chinese will have cars.

If this really happens, it will become nearly impossible to achieve 
major reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions. China and India 
account for 70 percent of the global increase in energy demand over the 
past two years.

If the "Nano trend" continues, the small window of opportunity to 
control spiralling energy use and greenhouse emissions will slam shut. 
If India is serious about reversing climate change, it must rethink its 
automobile policy.

(END/2008)

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Todd Edelman
Director
Green Idea Factory

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