Ricardo Parker, over at SeattlePI, while talking about Tata Nano said, “I’m sure Indians would much rather run on electricity than gasoline if the cost of the cars was the same”. While I’m sure his post is full of material to attract wonderful comments from Indian readers in any case, I thought I’ll add something on my blog to make my point amidst the noise that’s likely to ensue over there.
The market segment that Tata Nano is targeted at, in my opinion, cares about cost more than anything else. Tata is a household name in India and I doubt there would be a house that didn’t have something manufactured by Tata. They are into pretty much everything you can think of – from energy production to IT. That leads to a strong perception of reliability in people’s minds when consuming goods made by Tata. Ricardo mentioned about a new electric car being introduced as competition to Nano. A new entrant wouldn’t necessarily be able to match them in terms of auto service centers and other support related things immediately so Tata will definitely win in the short term with Nano.
That being said, it would be interesting to see how the auto-sector changes in India as a result of Tata Nano in 5 years from now.
Link to Tata Group on Wikipedia.
