Word: nano
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...More than 30 years later, I recently listened to Ratan Tata, chairman of Tata Sons, the holding company for the sprawling Indian conglomerate Tata Group, describe a family just like mine as the inspiration for the Nano, the ultra-cheap "people's car" that the Tata Group company Tata Motors launched on March 23. "What sparked it off was riding in a car and looking at them and saying, Surely there's a safer way that these people can be transported," he recalls. (See the 12 most important cars of all time...
...Tata has told this story many times since Tata Motors started developing the Nano six years ago. The project began with an audacious promise: build a safe, road-worthy vehicle costing 100,000 rupees (about $2,000), so affordable that it could allow millions of people in the developing world to park their scooters. Competitors dismissed the idea as folly. The Maruti 800, the Nano's closest competition, sells for about twice as much. Yet Tata has been as good as his word. The Nano is going on sale on April 9 at 470 outlets across India at a factory...
...original version of this article misidentified the iPod Shuffle as the iPod Nano...
...Tata Motor's strategy was to push further into international markets by attacking the potentially vast, low-budget car market in the developing world. That effort was to be led with innovative models like the Nano. Through numerous innovative manufacturing strategies - and cheap Indian labor - the Nano was supposed to debut last year with a sticker price of about $2,500. Meanwhile, the company was dipping its toes into the luxury segment through the acquisition of struggling...
...Some analysts say Tata's strategy was right, but the tide has been running against it. The Nano project was delayed by legal wrangling surrounding the company's acquisition of land in the state of West Bengal for a manufacturing plant. A two-year dispute over the fate of some 13,000 families that were to be displaced by the factory was resolved when Tata decided to build the plant in the state of Gujurat instead. But the launch of the Nano, originally set for October 2008, had to be pushed back. The company now says the car will debut...