Some Good News for the Environment: cheap electric car unveiled!

Thanks for y our comment. I don't believe that my text is incorrect, although you are correct: as far as I can tell from the articles I've read, the company is Tara but the car models are Tata, so it is a Tara Tata Nano, or a Tara Nano for short, etc. Do you have reason to believe that this is incorrect?

Regarding your willingness to drive one of these, I think you may be missing the point, or at least the point that I took away from the story but didn't articulate well. India is vastly increasing the number of cars on the road. These cars are designed to avoid using gasoline for that market as much as possible.

The same company makes larger cars. Some may be suitable for the US market. I wouldn't be so down on Indian cars since nearly every pill (or its components) that you take as medicine may be made there, and drug manufacture is much harder than making a car in my book. So they do have some significant technological capability and it is getting better all the time, as is the standard of living.

But, I don't really care if anyone in the US ever buys one of these, the point is get them in the vast Indian market. I recently read that 2-stroke engines, which power much current, pre-car transportation for people in India, are responsible for huge amounts of pollution. So I think this is a significant advance, especially given the cost, which is extremely low.

There has been tons of discussion here already on the available electric cars in the US that look like every truck owner or Porsche owners dream, plus less fancy versions (at least three companies).

Quote from gas2.org "Tara International announced that it will be selling two electric vehicles for even cheaper than the Tata Nano."

Tom, I amended the text to try to be clearer on the names. Sorry if that was confusing.

Enabling the car culture is not good for anything.

Thanks for the feedback, Ed and Tim.

I really don't see the point of that statement, Tim. It is a sort of absolutist position that doesn't seem to me to allow for real world scenarios that are going to exist and need to be dealt with.

India, a country that has extensive, if sometimes arcane, mass transit systems, is going to enable its car culture. Period. One way of putting it is that they want to be like us. They Indians might put it differently, and that's fine with me. However, minimizing environmental impact is always good.

Remember also that the electric car culture doesn't have to resemble the gas-powered car culture or the coal-powered electricity culture from an energy and fuel perspective- just read Sam Carana's extensive and convincing writings on the subject.

My greatest concern with these cars (through their development is exciting) is the 30MPH top speed. This makes these city cars. I would hope an expansion of eco-friendly mass transit would lessen the congestion in cities, rather than adding to it (call me a dreamer).

The articles linked to others on hybrids that traveled at real commuter speeds that could reach 150/300MPG. This is truly exciting (though I am not sure how anyone over 4 feet tall would fit in that "wingless cessna"). I suggest that these vehicles are the ones that make the future of the automobile exciting.

How is electricity in India produced? hydro? coal? nuke? It could affect the environment still if the electricity to charge up the battery/car comes from a destructively polluting source.

Yes, Susan, you are right, it could be polluting, but it doesn't have to be, and with some solar cells now more efficient than coal, the companies are really just waiting for enough of a market, or other incentive, to build much larger factories.

Debra, if you've seen an Indian train, you would not want to imagine it going fast at all. The 2-stroke gas/oil powered bicycles and scooters that convey many people in Indian cities at present, along with buses, taxis and conventional cars, are generating a lot of air pollution and using a lot of oil, and in the case of the 2-stroke design that is so popular (like a lawn-mover engine), the efficiency/pollution trade-off is terrible, from what I have read.

Congestion in Indian cities is one or maybe two orders of magnitude higher than anywhere in the US, literally, in terms of housing density. It is unimaginable for most Americans. We can all dream, but those people need transportation, especially since many live far from where they work. Electrifying the buses is of course important, and improving them. The point is that with the standard of living going up, who are we to tell the Indians they can't have the same amenities (cars) we have? But, they have the chance of introducing much better cars than we have, from an energy and environmental perspective. We have the chance, too, but India doesn't have the same lobbying forces of Detroit and Exxon etc. that have been so difficult to overcome. So, electric cars could lead the way in India, and lead us by example. It is, at least potentially, going to happen, and is happening faster than we are moving, despite all of our resources, wealth (as a nation), and technological prowess.

James,

Thank you for this positive story on the environment. Will you cross-post this to The Green group?

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Absolutely! Sorry, I must have missed that group. Thanks.

Here are two links with photos:
http://specials.rediff.com/money/2008/mar/18car1.htm
http://specials.rediff.com/money/2008/mar/17tara1.htm
In each case, you click on the 'next' button to see more photos and details of the respective vehicle.

This just proves how cheap electric cars can be; they've also got a truck and a 14-seater light bus. The Tara Tiny and Tara Titu are priced at Rs 99,000 which is $2,470 while the Tara Shuttle, which is a 14-seater is expected to cost about Rs 500,000 which is about $12,475 - Now who said that electric cars were too expensive?

Note also that it isn't necessarily the purchase price that makes an electric car cheap. The Nice Mega City is available in the UK from £8,998 plus VAT. It is available with either two or four seats, has a 40 mph top speed and a typical range of up to 40 miles. It comes with two year warranty on labor and parts, including the batteries.

The website says that the car can save you £7,000 per year. That's because the MEGA City is exempt from the London congestion charge and exempt from road tax. Road tax is set to increase to £950 in the 2008 budget on the most polluting cars. You can benefit from free parking in many London locations. Driving will cost you about 1.5 pence per mile. The MEGA City can be charged from a domestic socket at home, at work or at any of a growing number of public charge points around London. As a company car, it could be even more attractive financially. As a zero emission vehicle the Mega City allows companies 100% corporation tax write-down in the first year.

Subaru presented its electric car, the R1e, at the New York International Auto Show. It has a range of 50 miles and a top speed of 65 mph. It can charge to 80% capacity in 15 minutes using a dedicated charger, or be fully charged overnight with a regular domestic outlet. Its lithium-ion battery has an estimated life of 10 years or 100,000 miles. The R1e is being readied for delivery to customers in Japan and Subaru is looking at world markets, including the US. As part of the vehicle's evaluation in the US, the New York Power Authority, which runs power plants across the state, is putting two of the vehicles into service and their performance will be monitored over the next few months.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/fn/5636024.html

I'm sorry but I don't know what you are talking about. The title of my original article was "electric Tara Tiny becomes world's cheapest car." Apparently I didn't copy the title over from my blog. Nothing in the text contradicts this. The Tara cars are electric and the Tata cars are gas-powered, according to my sources, and that is what I said. However, the overall company name is Tara, which apparently confused one reader, and which I tried to clear up. "These two cars will be priced at approximately 99K Rupees (2,475 USD), and are built in partnership with a Chinese company named Aucma. To compare, the cheapest Tata Nano comes in at just about 100k Rupees. Not much of a difference on the face of it, but the Tara vehicles being electric compared to the Tata's gasoline powertrain would make you think the Tara would be much more expensive." from gas2.org. The Tara, as my original article claimed, is electric according to this source. I never said anything was a hybrid. The Tata was only brought up by Tom Hunter, to whom I explained that this name is the name of the company, a company which also puts out Tata cars in addition to Tara cars. I saw no reason to copy or plagiarize all of the details from another article when I provided a link to those details. Comments made by me about other improvements to the electricity supply in India and to higher efficiency for electrical cars were hypothetical, and labeled as such, in response to complaints that these cares, not intended for the US market, would not please certain US readers, and the erroneous claim that an electric car for India would be worse for the environment than a gas car, and other comments that had no relevance to Indian society or infrastructure. If you can please explain what is incorrect about what I said, as opposed to what I didn't say, or if my source is wrong, I would be delighted to learn the truth.

You're right, James, the car is the Tara Tiny, not to be confused with the car that previously held the claim of being the world's cheapest car, the Tata Nano. My thoughts were very similar to yours, James. I love to publish an article with photos on this car, because it's so cheap. It's wonderful that the world's cheapest car is an electric car (which shouldn't be surprising, actually, given that electric cars don't need many of the parts that gasoline cars need). For some time, I did follow all the sources of publications on this car and every time it ended up at the pages that I mentioned above (at rediff.com) both for details and photos, and I didn't want to copy things straight from this site without their indication that this would be allowed. Anyway, we'll await further news on this.

Note that General Motors (GM) introduced the EV1 back in 1996. It did well, but - a few years later - GM discontinued the EV1. Why? Have a look at 'Who killed the electric car?', an excellent documentary, released on DVD in 2006. It seems GM merely produced the EV1 to comply with CARB rules that 2% of cars had to be zero emission cars by 1998. The EV1 was a fine car! GM initially used 533kg lead-acid battery packs that gave the EV1 a range of up to 90 miles per charge. GM later switched to Nickel-metal-hydride (NiMH) batteries, which - among other things - offered a greater range. GM actually owned many of the rights associated with NiMH batteries.

Estimates are that GM spent $350 million on EV1 development, while spending $600 million on lobbying to kill the requirements for clean cars. Oil companies, GM, Ford and Chrysler, they were all lobbying with the Bush administration. Convinced that the EPA would continue to kill the requirement for clean cars, GM in 2000 sold worldwide patent rights for NiMH battery technology to Texaco, which six days later merged with Chevron. Shortly thereafter, a Chevron subsidiary filed a suit against Toyota for using NiMH batteries in the electric car version of the RAV4. Toyota discontinued the RAV4, while the case lead to a settlement in 2004 stipulating that Toyota was only to use NiMH batteries in hybrids that cannot plug in. Converting a Toyota Prius to plug in is typically done using batteries by A123 Systems, a company associated with GM. For further details, see the EV1.org website.

These days, there are even better alternatives, such as lithium-ion batteries, but we should be careful that companies don't use their dominance in the market or abuse patent law in order to hold back developments that would lead to reductions in greenhouse gases.

Sam, thanks for the support and additional information.

I agree that we need to make the best technology available to companies who will use it rather than tie it up or sit on it. The US government has the ability to take patents away from companies or force them to share patents (this was done in WWII, when Monsanto was given rights to run the nylon process that used to belong to German company Bayer, if I remember correctly. Otherwise, there would have been only one company in the US, DuPont, that could make nylon, and this was considered a strategic weak point that couldn't be tolerated. It seems like the present time could be the right time to press for similar strategic, forced patent sharing; it could succeed with the right government in Washington.

I do welcome disagreement, so if anybody ever thinks I'm wrong, I certainly want to get the story straight and correct, and welcome feedback. Thanks to all for the comments.!

Good point, James. We need to review legislation to see if it stands in the way of reducing emissions. Where necessary we should amend legislation or strengthen other legislation (perhaps as part of anti-trust and cartel legislation) to avoid such practices, but it's imperative that we do so now.

The problem is that patents are Constitutionally protected, which makes it very hard for any law (except for wartime legislation) to overrule them.

Quoting the Constitution:
Section 8: The Congress shall have power to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.

Patents usually last 20 years from the filing date, i.e. too long for a car manufacturer to wait. The prospect of fighting a legal case all the way up to the Supreme Court is too daunting for investors to back.

Personally, I would like to see a change in the Constitution, so that saving the planet doesn't get a lower priority than "promoting the progress of science and useful arts". If we have to delay the progress of science for a few years, in order to save the planet, then surely we must do so. However, I actually believe that science will greatly benefit from more competition. We should avoid legal fights that drag on for many years. Clearly, some companies are prepared to exploit loopholes of the legal system as a strategic method to stop or delay competitive use of technologies that are crucial in reducing emissions. If there are legal uncertainties, then it will be hard for start-ups to get off the ground. Government needs to facilitate rapid development of such technologies, for the sake of reducing emissions, rather than to protect those who seek to hold back such developments.

I realize that changing the Constitution is going to be difficult, but if that's the path to take, then we better start now. I hate to rely on giving a president wartime powers, this time not to fight a war on terrorism, poverty, drugs or whatever pleases the president. We should get the fundamentals right - look at where leaving powers with a president got us into now.

Sam, as I understand it, the government routinely takes charge or patents, and while these examples, may not be identical to the forced patent sharing that led to MoBay's formation (Monsanto-Bayer, later just part of Monsanto), I think that they are equivalent, legally. This t"takeover" happens a lot in areas that are decided to be "in the national interest", and I know of a specific, relatively recent case where this has happened for computer algorithms that were developed by a University research group. The people involved, including graduate students, were and are never able to talk about their work, ever, for reasons of national security. The legal aspects of the takeover may have been smoothed over by the fact that the research was funded by the Feds, but I think that the key part of the Constitutional language for this type of case is "shall have the power to grant". This carries with it an implicit power than can, rather than must, be grant patents, with a decision-making process that can be invoked by Congress without any change to the Constitution. We need a patent lawyer to weigh in on this, however. I work on patents as an inventor, but a little knowledge is a dangerous thing...

Man, I wish we could edit our comments!!!!!#$@%O(&U#R@!!! The typos drive me nuts. I also fail to understand why we are forced to type into this tiny box when I have a huge screen that is going un-used. Yeah, I could write in Word first, but that takes away the spontaneity of the exchange.

=)

Interesting idea--odd name.