TATA motors have refurbished their website dedicated to TATA nano with better user interface and more befitting looks. The site has a 360 degree spin preview of the peoples car and has been updated with recent showcases at Geneva Auto Show. The presence of forum,poll and blog add the Web 2.0 factor to it. Give it a look here.

Enough has been said and read about people’s car or TATA Nano and nearly all the articles and blogs seems like copies of each other. In fact the opinions of people are divided into two categories: one is talking about the freedom of personal mobility that it can provide to masses at cheaper price and the other one is objecting to the pollution and congestion crisis that this ‘little elephant’ can cause. But amidst all this excitement one thing is sure that TATA Motors has created history and rewritten the rules of automobile industry.

I wont talk about how it looks like,or the emission levels or things which have already been said. What I really think is this car can ensue a revolution in the field of ‘percussive engineering’(=messing up with things in order to make them work better,see ‘percussive maintenance’ to digest this) particularly in India. Indians are not known to experiment a lot with their priced assets and it is the reason why we never have a character who can do whole lot of things by tweaking and screwing in Bollywood films. We will never have a character like Basher Tarr of Ocean 11(played by Don Cheadle) in Indian films because Indians love their gadgets so much that they will never screw it. In fact their love can more eloquently be put as the fear of messing up the whole thing while mending one. Only the few brave do all the tweaking on their own with their cars and this intrepidity is often called foolishness.

The tata nano has been priced such that its parts should cost a little more than that of two wheelers which I believe is a good sign for percussive engineering. So people can experiment more without big monetary fears. Tata nano can do something like what Nintendo Wii did in video gaming industry. It was priced almost half the price of competitors and focussed on all new spectrum of consumers. Playing on Nintendo Wii is most enjoyed with family and it was obvious that it became the number one present in Christmas season.

However people in India might not gift this car but they certainly can innovate whole lot of things around TATA Nano. India produces the largest number of engineers in the world but there are very few out of these which can be employed in the private sector. The fault lies with the education method in India which stresses a lot on theory rather than practicals. A student of automobile engineering without any knowledge of V 12 engine is only possible in India.

Its not that things are very bad from the innovation point of view in India but TATA Nano can give the people a toy to play with and learn which can lead to bigger things in this sector.