Summary
Indian firms may well become world-leaders in green technologies to make sure that their dream of individual mobility is seen coming to life.
Analysis
What we see happening in India today is simply astonishing. The country starts moving and shakeing at an ever increasing speed. I work with Indians frequently and I am always taken aback by their get-going attitude.
From my experience with Indians and the way they look at their surroundings they will become world-leaders in green technology in a remarkably short timeframe.
Indians in general believe that they are here for a short while and will return again to roam the earth. This gives them a very long-termish perspective of life and lets take them care of the environment. Because they believe that they will be born again, they are willing to give new technology a chance much more readily than most people living in the West.
The group launching the Nano is built on the beliefs of careing for the comunity it is part of. I was very much taken aback by the fact that unlike in many Western group of companies, the people at TATA's not only believe in what they say but they do it too. Testament to that are the efforts they make to bring the compressed-air engine to commercial life. I reckon that many of the Nanos shall be powered by this technology and thus have air as their emission. Indians are pragmatic engineers and they know perfectly well that the way forward is not the petrol or diesel engine as we know it today. Many of the ubiquitous auto rickshaws plying the Indian inner cities are LPG powered already. So expect to see LPG engines on the Bajaj small car as either a starter or an option.
The Nano and the likes are not scaled down versions of larger cars but incorporate many ingenious combinations of materials in them. I expect to see some of them spilling over to the cars in the West and enhance their performance.
The main challenge for TATA and its competitors will be to bring road as fast about as they are bringing cars to the market. This reminds me of what the Italians did in the 1950s and 1960s when the started turning out small FIAT's in numbers. The Agnelli family started investing in roads and the excellent, privately financed and maintained, expressway network say the light of the day in Italy. I expect the same to happen in India except that the materials used to build these toll-roads will be higher tech too. Indian contractors start without the legacy cost of past investments and can go for the newest technology at once. Solidified soil as fast-track roads for instance or abundant use of Ecocrete concrete for roadbuilding so as not to seal the ground off as we do in the West with our tarmac roads.
I am convinced that we shall see many interesting and worthwhile and greenish technologies coming out of India in the next ten years. India's populations general beliefs will see to that.
