Yada yada, I know people have already been going gaga elsewhere about the Tata Nano launch recently in India. Frankly, I’m amused by the “I can have my cake but you can’t have yours” response of the so-called environmentalists about it destroying nature. Excuse me? The bloody thing’s gonna be Euro IV compliant and and use much less fuel than any gas-guzzling SUV. In fact this IS the way of the future – smaller cars which use less resources, and the earlier we pass legislations to stop more resource intensive stuff, better will it be for humanity.
That’s not the reason why I took up writing this post either. It was, quite predictably, a story on Asus’s Eee PC, a low-cost PC running Xandros Linux which I came across on Y! News. Of course dum dum, I knew about it, but this is a review. The point I wanted to make is, that I finally see companies getting more sensible. Not in the sense of using Linux, but in the sense that some are actually breaking away from cartels fleecing the end-consumer. I mean, taking fucking Windows Vista for example – I see no reason at all for such a shitty OS with high system requirements – unless it be for the fact that PC manufacturers wanted to get cosy in bed with Microsucks by deliberately pushing users to opt for higher systems.
Back to the Nano, it’s quite astonishing to see what they could accomplish at such a low price point. Look great too. Which WILL put a lot of us bloggers in a dilemma, you see, because when we say something like “the Nano looks great!”; we’ll need to clarify whether we’re talking about the Tata thingy or the Apple thingy.
5 replies on “The OTHER Nano”
You know when you think about it this car has very ominous strings attached to it, as more number of people will buy it the oil consumption will naturally go up-exponentially. Now at this time our planet will not respond healthily to it, neither will our economy it will just increase our dependence on foreign oil, which I am sure is something nobody wants.
All in all it’s a win for the poor and a huge loss for the next generation. Now the thing is which option will the government choose, votes or long term benefits? They could subsidize battery technology and make the thing electric at roughly the same price, you know.
@Anuj: My point is, agreed, legislation IS required, but NOT against the Nano – but against the gas-guzzling SUVs and other inefficient vehicles. Frankly, I don’t give a damn to its price, but that fact that it DOES occupy less road space AND emits less emissions than most cars out on the road today is a major point. We need to stop stuff like cars which are not that fuel efficient – because THOSE are ones which will consume fuel equivalent to a few Nanos AND spew out more pollution than it.
Electric is good, but there’s no support network of charging stations, that’s the problem. There was this Indian car (electric) called Reva – see? It didn’t take off that well because of this very reason. And although the car doesn’t emit, the thermal power plants which produce electricity for it DOES pollute. And anyway, most regions of our country have electricity shortage.
Please don’t get me wrong, I am not against the idea of the car but I feel that there are a couple of chinks that need to be smoothened out. I know the shortcomings but we need to do something concrete, agreed that there should be legislation on emissions but the thing’s that this car will be mass produced at a really crazy rate as it’s cheap now that will exponentially increase the oil consumption, simply due to the fact that they are far more numerous than the other cars. It’s like cheap mill cloth vs. handmade cloth, the other one takes more resources but as the mill cloth is cheaper it sells more and uses more resources, simple.
Personally I feel that we should encourage nuclear power, by the way do you know that fly ash is radioactive and that it builds up slowly, so nuclear power should be safer, plus there’s global warming. However for the future we should invest heavily in solar and other alt. energy resources.
However, the thing’s that politicians take up things in 2,4 and 8 year segments they can’t look into the future, there are not votes there and they’ll be dead by the time something useful happens so they bow down to industrialists which is quite sad. We’re basically telling our children, our waste is your problem just because we couldn’t find a better way to generate energy.
I am sorry for commenting after so long, things went crazy in my life for a while, the recent post in my blog was typed out by my mom! I couldn’t even post, it was crazy but I still managed to screw up my pre-boreds, sigh.
@Anuj: Your mom typed it out? Wow, why? And I think that post has “my current prep is nil” or something like that. She typed THAT out? 😮
Anyway, the handmade vs mill analogy is VERY good, except for the slight flaw that gas guzzling SUVs CONTINUE to consume more resources beyond the factory line. Think of it independently – Nano only starts rolling out in September IF the factory in Singur gets built, and then too, not much in year one. My point is, forget the Nano for the time, what about the CURRENT cars? Why are we letting car manufacturers get away with making fuel inefficient SUVs and other cars, when they’re perfectly capable of making hybrids like Prius and Civic? What we NEED a legislation which FORCES lower fuel consumption. Frankly, I think the whole idea of ‘global warming’ is bullshit (I know you’d want a long talk on this one, email me for that – don’t continue an off topic debate on global warming here). But I am concerned that our oil resources will be scarce within five decades. And the whole problem with going nuclear is waste disposal, and it’s a very BIG problem. No matter how ‘fool proof’ disposal systems startups come up with, life isn’t a spanking new sales brochure – Murphy’s Law does creep in, and then the cookie crumbles.
So what I’m try to say is that if we can get more an more who CURRENTLY use cars which are fuel inefficient into ones LIKE the Nano (and not necessarily only the Nano), then it’d be a big leap forward – as then we save road space AND fuel compared to a fleet of Hummers.
Nope, I mean the Development Diary post (I edited it and put the F-word in), I was busy making my project at that time. I finished a day before the exam by the way, and it had to be one of the best ones in my class, seriously my peers suck (some of them made it a month ago and it still sucked), in case you’re wondering I made it on Infinity and 2001: A space Odyssey a historical novel.
I agree with you on the SUVs but like I said it’s now about satisfying capitalists and getting voted in, they aren’t looking beyond the next election, that’s a big problem we need to address. See nuclear technology is more of a stop gap measure currently it’s one of the most viable and practical options we have. Anyway isn’t the waste produced by burning dead plants and animals a.k.a fossil fuels screwing up the planet, the emissions that we are releasing annually combined are far more dangerous than the comparatively scanty amount of nuclear waste being produced.
I was about write something really long over here but then I read your statutory warning and decided to email it to you, when I get around to write it that is. Right now I am supposed to be studying….