Huge demand for nano lottery

A modestly-priced motorised vehicle pitched at the millions of people in India who currently travel by bicycle and scooter was always going to be popular, but demand for the world’s cheapest production is such that those wanting to order the Tata Nano are having to enter a lottery.

It is expected that 500,000 people will buy a lottery ticket in the hope of securing one of 100,000 Tata Nanos at the introductory price of 100,000 Rupees (£1,400).

A delay in moving production of the car to a new factory means that the initial production run will be limited to as few as 50,000 cars in the first year.

The Tata Nano

The TaTa Nano is a small-engined and extremely lightweight four-seater car which returns an average 50 miles per gallon; the car is India’s equivalent of the Model T Ford – a mass-produced, lightweight and affordable car intended to make motoring accessible to as many as possible.

The car has critics who fear the environmental impact if it eventually sells a million units a year in the sub-continent as predicted. Andrew Davis, director at the Environmental Transport Association, believes that a lightweight car such as the Nano could provide a template for cars in the West: “We struggle to reduce our emissions of CO₂ at the same time as even the smallest model of car is weighed down with features such as air conditioning, electric windows and ABS brakes.”

The world’s cheapest car is coming to Britain

With less a month before the world’s cheapest production car goes on sale in India, it has been announced that a modified version of the £1,500 Tata Nano will be available to buy in Europe from 2011.

The Tata Nano Europa will be 19 centimetres longer, 8 centimetres wider and will have a higher specification than the original car, and as a result will cost at least three times as much.

The new version will feature a 3-cylinder aluminium, fuel-injected engine, 5-speed automatic transmission and power steering.

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