A car for the other half
India’s Tata Motors unveils its $2,500 car today, says Andy Mukherjee in Bloomberg, and the world will never look at Indian engineering the same again. As rising food and energy costs squeeze the developing world, India’s “underappreciated” engineering prowess will be an agent of “disinflation” as it rewrites the “definition of affordability.” The $2,500 car may make “critics snigger” about meeting Western safety and environmental standards, but “they are missing the point: This isn’t a product for the West.” It is for the world’s “next billion consumers,” and Tata is smart to pounce on them now instead of just waiting for them to become wealthier.
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