Nice little Tato Nano Fire - Fuel Economy, Hypermiling, EcoModding News and Forum

DIMS · 04-10-2010, 03:08 AM

Sudden fire in tiny Tata Nano ignites safety concerns - The Denver Post

Lazarus · 04-10-2010, 01:10 PM

Ouch! While driving home from the show room. Hmmm wonder if he'll buy another one.

gone-ot · 04-10-2010, 08:56 PM

...so much for the Quality Control of "...smoke & flame..." emissions.

hummingbird · 04-11-2010, 10:51 AM

Guys, don't be hard on the Tatas.

You won't probably appreciate the difficulties in producing a $2500 vehicle in India, and Tatas have a very good name in terms of corporate responsibility. People trust them. I believe there is about 12 to 18 months of waiting list for the vehicle, and they had to take out draws to decide the recipients of the first batches of Nano.

Their original plans of setting up a plant in Singur in the state of of West Bengal (ruled by Marxists) was canceled after a messy confrontation between the locals and the Tatas, with the state government caught in the crossfire. They incurred huge loss in scrapping the planned development there, and the next plants were all about 2000 km away from the original site. The production persisted, although a bit delayed, and people's impressions about the car are not bad.

Extreme cost pressures means close relationships with local vendors, and extreme cost pressure on procurement from them. Someone, somewhere then cuts too deep, and it then cuts into the bone. People learn from their mistakes, and slowly the rhythm settles down to good music.

Note that Tata's current hot-selling hatch Vista was also not a 'born to be a winner' design - it went through several earlier avatars, some selling ok, some outright losers. The learning from each generation was put back into the next design, and today Vista is considered to be the most VFM hatch in its segment, holding its own among international competitors like Chevy, Skoda, Hyundai, Suzuki, Honda.

Indians know a winner when they see one, and root for it all the way. Nano for sure is one. After all why won't you like a cute hatch similar to the Smart Fortwo, only a tad underpowered but seating 4 and at 1/4 the price of a fortwo. Who needs the power on overcrowded Indian roads anyways!

I worked for a short while (15 months) with a Tata JV, and they take quality quite seriously. So take that as an insider view of their intent. My field was Industrial Automation, and had nothing much to do with Tata Motors,so I am not privy to the details of their current operations.

RobertSmalls · 04-11-2010, 09:53 PM

Maybe an occasional car fire is par for the course among $2500 microcars, but if they hope to sell the $6000 Nano Europa in the developed world, it had better not use the same fire-prone components and construction as the Indian-market Nano.

There have been three Nano fires so far, which is enough to convince me it's a trend. In America, I'm pretty sure there would already have been a recall, and nobody would be allowed to drive a Nano until the problem was identified and corrected.

moonmonkey · 04-11-2010, 11:11 PM

remember the ford pinto ,,but it had to be rear ended to light, i guess the tata is self igniting. (modern technology).

roflwaffle · 04-11-2010, 11:27 PM

Good thing we don't have any of that crap in cars over here.

hummingbird · 04-11-2010, 11:33 PM

That is the trouble with Americans - they start shouting at a couple of isolated incidents like each of them has their tail on fire, and it then spirals into a political/transnational fireball, not focussing on the real issue at all. So the car mfrs have to put in tonnes of extra stuff, driving the price up for everyone. (Here, we have plenty people, so we don't jack up insurance for all because of a couple of 'isolated' incidents).

As I said the problem is due to the new parts procured for the Nano specifically. The Tatas are producing and selling 100s of thousands of vehicles for other models like Indica, Inidigo, Sumo, etc, and we don't see anything amiss there.