Word: nano
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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When Tata Motors unveiled designs last year to build the Nano - a cheap, two-wheel drive car for the people - it proudly declared its hopes for India's mass market. It's getting a dose of mass protest instead. Last week, Tata Motors shut down its plant in Singur, West Bengal, citing "obstruction, intimidation and confrontation" by protesters that had been demonstrating at the site for the past month...
...carefully worded statement leaves Tata the option to change his mind if the protests subside. He has much less room to maneuver around the company's promise to launch the Nano by the end of this year. Tata has staked his reputation on successfully producing and selling the fabled world's cheapest car, which will sell for about $2,300 - a price low enough to turn India's millions of motorcycle and scooter drivers into car owners. "This is an iconic project," says Abdul Majeed, who follows the Indian auto industry as a partner at PriceWaterhouseCoopers in Chennai. "The whole...
...meet those expectations, Tata Motors will have to shift some of Singur's production to its two other Nano plants in northern and western India while it builds a new third factory somewhere else. There are plenty of other cities that would welcome the jobs and tax revenue, but the process of shifting workers, equipment and suppliers could take 12 to 16 months, Majeed says. He expects that the first Nanos will be sold this year as promised, but there may be fewer of them. With just two plants, the company may be able to produce only...
...gasoline-powered car, have obvious carbon costs. Others are less clear but still significant. Take your diet: livestock are responsible for an estimated 18% of global carbon emissions, so when you chow down a hamburger, you're effectively emitting CO2 as well. Even something as small as an iPod Nano will add to your carbon footprint, thanks to both the energy used to produce and ship it and the energy later needed to charge it (68 lbs. of CO2 over its lifetime, according to the British design consultancy...
...Until clinching this purchase, Tata's main claim to fame was its recent introduction of the $2,500 Nano, a basic box on wheels sold only in India. Will luxury car buyers be put off by Jags (the price of Jaguar's latest sports car is more than $64,000) and Land Rovers made by an Indian company that also sells the world's cheapest car? "Not if it's sensitively handled," Wormald says. That means for the foreseeable future, both brands will likely continue to be produced in the U.K., to keep their British-made pedigree intact. Furthermore...