Yes, Virginia There is a $2,500 Car – Yup $2,500
Tata motors of India has revealed their plans to produce a $2,500 care, that well, us Americans can’t have. Actually we may not want it.
To make this car $2,500 they pretty much tossed out anything that isn’t absolutely required to operate. The outside of India will probably fail emission and safety standards on any other countries roads.
Driving the cost-cutting were Tata’s engineers, who in an earlier project questioned whether their trucks really needed all four brake pads or could make do with three. As they built Tata’s new car, for about half the price of the next-cheapest Indian alternative, their guiding philosophy was: Do we really need that? [...]
The model appearing on Thursday has no radio, no power steering, no power windows, no air-conditioning and one windshield wiper instead of two, according to suppliers and Tata’s own statements. Bucking prevailing habits, the car lacks a tachometer and uses an analog rather than digital speedometer [...]
To save $10, Tata engineers redesigned the suspension to eliminate actuators in the headlights, the levelers that adjust the angle of the beam depending on how the car is loaded, according to Mr. Chaturvedi of Lumax. In lieu of the solid steel beam that typically connects steering wheels to axles, one supplier, Sona Koyo Steering Systems, used a hollow tube
Although this sounds like a horrific disaster on the horizon, this car is designed to get the Indian population off of motor scooters and into cars – which would be safer.
