How Green Is A Mini?(Business; ENVIRONMENT)(Tata Nano)

Byline: Jason Overdorf and Fred Guterl

Tataas Nano may put millions of new drivers on the roads. It may also herald a new source of pollution.

The unveiling of Tata Motorsa apeopleas caraaperhaps the most anticipated vehicle in more than a decadeahad the frenzied atmosphere of a blockbuster movie opening. For four years, Tata kept every detail of its development top secret, and now a hundred or more photographers jostled to get the first shot. When chairman Ratan Tata, citing the first flight by the Wright brothers and the invention of the computer, pulled back the curtain on the newly named Nano, it turned out to be a four-seater, a bit more than three meters long, with a 642cc engine and made of plastics and glue instead of welded steel.

Despite speculation to the contrary, the car will retail for 100,000 rupees, or $2,500. (aA promise is a promise,a Tata said.) At less than half what Maruti Suzuki, the current market leader in India, charges for its cheapest model, the Nano is priced to get urban Indians off their motor scooters and motorcycles and into a car. It is expected to inspire other cheap cars and force Maruti Suzuki and others to slash prices, bringing millions more new drivers onto Indian roads over the next five years. The prospect of a flood of new drivers in a nation of 1 billion people has inspired a backlash from environmentalists, who fear itas a major new source of pollution.

The concern is that a supercheap auto will encourage development on the American modelarelying on the car rather than mass transit. More drivers will add to air pollution, already a critical problem in more than half of Indiaas cities, and to the carbon in the atmosphere that causes global warming. aThis car promises to be an environmental disaster of substantial proportions,a says Daniel Esty, an environmental expert at Yale.

Tata has worked hard to get out in front of its critics, at least on air pollution. The first models to roll off the assembly line in Singur, West Bengal, will get about 20 kilometers per liter of gasoline (50 miles per gallon) and meet European emissions standards that have yet to be adopted in India. Tata insists that the Nano will pollute less than the two-wheelers it is intended to replace, and get ...