tata

Small products, big innovation: The dawn of a nano age?

Europe loves the VW Beetle, the Renault Twingo, and the Smart. The U.S. has the Mini and will finally get the Smart, too. And recently India proudly presented the spiritual successor to all of these--the $2,500 Tata Nano, a "people's car" that is widely gushed about, not only for its surprisingly slick design but also for its innovations.

In recent years, ecoconcerns, design savvy, and an (urban) willingness to quest for practicality have fostered the trend toward specialized cars that are as small as the niches they serve. While the idea of a small car … Read more

Photos: Tata's $2,500 car

CNET News.com posted a gallery of photos covering the new Nano, a car from Tata designed to be the cheapest car in the world. Its 100,000 rupee price tag is equivalent to about $2,500. For that price you get a tiny four seater that's less than 10 feet long, and gets power from a two-cylinder 623-cc engine. The company has no current plans to export the Nano to the U.S.

Click here for photos of the Tata Nano.

Fiery protest over Tata's Nano

Tata Motors is billing its tiny, ultracheap Nano as the "people's car," but some people would just as soon not see it get built--at least under current conditions.

The Tata Nano made an outsized splash at its debut Thursday as the world's automotive press disseminated details and photos of the $2,500 car, which the giant company ($7.2 billion in revenue for its most recent fiscal year) said it designed to give Indian families an alternative to overcrowded scooters and to "set a new benchmark among small cars." The Nano is roughly half … Read more

Tata Nano: The Indian Model-T

99 years after the Ford Model T, the Tata Nano has been announced in India for 100,000 rupees, or about $2500. And you know what? It looks amazingly good. I was completely expecting a Yugo ugly box, but you could drop this 10 foot long car into an urban street in Europe (the most competitive subcompact market on the planet) and it would fit right in. It looks amazingly refined and interesting - heck, it looks better than budget models selling for many times the price from most mainstream manufacturers.

And they have a website that is fairly Web … Read more

Photos: The People's Car from Tata

Got $2,500? Then Tata Motors may have just the car for you.

If you live in India, that is. The tiny little bubble of a car, which made its debut Thursday at the New Delhi Auto Expo, is expected to go on sale to Indian consumers later this year, but it won't hit the export market in the next few years--and then it'll likely be to dealerships nearby in Southeast Asia and farther afield in Africa and Latin America. Too bad for a San Francisco-based colleague of mine, whose first reaction was "I want one of … Read more

Ford in talks with Tata over Jaguar, Land Rover sale

Ford confirmed Thursday that the company is considering an offer to sell its Jaguar and Land Rover subsidiaries to Tata Motors of India.

"Ford is committed to focused negotiations at a more detailed level with Tata Motors concerning the potential sale of the combined Jaguar-Land Rover business," Lewis Booth, an executive vice president at Ford, said in a statement.

"There is still a considerable amount of work to do, and while no final decision has been made, we will proceed with further substantive discussions with Tata Motors over the forthcoming weeks with a view to … Read more