Although people who live in India’s cities who already own cars will buy the Nano, they are not the primary market. The intended market are the majority people in India who live in rural areas who have never been able to own a four wheel mode of transport before because they could not afford any that are offered. Mr. Tata commented in frustration in an interview on Tata.com in 2006… We are not really talking about how it will change the way people live or transport themselves, what their aspirations may be.”

For the economy at large in India, and particularly for the rural population that is dominant in India, ( and will be for awhile even with urbanization trends), the Nano
is a life changing opportunity for people in the rural economy. If the roads can be improved, it will increase their mobility in ways that will given them economic mobility that will greatly improve their quality of lifes. In particular, empowerment and liberation of women in smaller towns.

I don’t disagree that cars cause terrible congestion, pollution,etc in the cities, and that cost effective public transport options are needed. But the Nano is needed too, and it is not just another car.

The central and state governments are trying to the extent the politics allows to improve the road network and connectivity. Having recently traveled on many of these roads outside the smaller metro areas in multiple parts of the country, they are making progress. Without better rural roads the Nano vision of safer more affordable transport to first time car buyers can’t happen What is also required is an efficient and cost-effective option in public transport for rural and urban areas.

To answer that question accurately, we’d need to look at the big picture. We would need to consider all the emissions induced by automobile use, including vehicle manufacture, roadway construction, petroleum refining, etc. Here in the US for example, these life cycle emissions add a full 60% on top of tailpipe emissions (see http://sustainable-transportation.com/ for details).

But we can’t stop there—we’d need to project how automobile permeation will influence the development of cities, and what it will do to the development of other transportation modes. Automobiles take up an enormous amount of space to park and drive, which spreads cities out, making more people need automobiles. They consume a huge amount of shared right-of-way space relative to the number of people moved–buses, street cars, and anything else that uses the road gets stuck in the car traffic taking and are no longer able to get people around the city efficiently. Cyclists and and pedestrians get muscled out of the way. Pressure grows to build more roads and/or more lanes, which generally makes streets and neighborhoods uglier, more dangerous and more disjointed for everyone not in an automobile, so yet more get cars and use them to get around. These multiple feedbacks sum to an upward spiral that makes the city less safe, noisier, more polluted, and of course emit more greenhouse gases. In order to estimate the greenhouse gas effects, a life cycle analysis would need to be applied to these feedbacks as well.

Beyond the GHG implications, the safety issue is substantial in its own right. Half a million people are killed worldwide in traffic collisions each year, and many more seriously injured. Even here in the safety-conscious US, over 40,000 people die each year in collisions, the leading cause of death for people aged 1 to 35. And those deaths have been shown to be driven by VMT—-note that the recent VMT dip driven by high gas prices saved lives at a rate of 3000+ annually. Meanwhile, in developing countries, the vast majority of collision deaths/injuries are to people not inside cars–quite literally the rich are running over the poor.

It has been suggested that switching to cars, by putting a metal box around passengers, will improve safety–it may improve safety for those in the cars, but it must be accounted for that everyone outside the box will be less safe.

In part because of these feedbacks and considering full accounting for induced emissions, it’s hard for me to imagine widespread adoption of the automobile by the developing world can be achieved simultaneously with anything close to our global targets for greenhouse gas emissions reduction. A serious analysis would certainly be worth doing before Nanos fill the streets.

Finally, what about the argument that we shouldn’t deny people what we (Americans) already have? The fact is, cities can transport their people better, more cheaply, cleaner and more safely by other modes, and be much more beautiful, livable, and healthy for it. And in any case, the equity argument is moot if, in fulfilling the dream of auto-mobility for all, our greenhouse gases drive the earth off a cliff.