Plastic Cars, You Mean Other Than Matchbox?
Maybe it’s just my age. I grew up in a world where people knew the movie line about plastics from The Graduate and I remember being severely chastised for putting plastic in our first microwave . . . which was in fact the first microwave period in the small West Texas town where I grew up. Plastic cars other than those of the matchbox variety just frankly scare me.
However, Tata Motors is working on releasing a plastic four-door compact billed as “small,” so I’m thinking compact or sub-compact given the driving conditions in India. They want to bring the vehicle in for under $3,000 and will be fabricating it to a large extent from plastic to keep production costs as low as possible.
I have friends in India who have shared photographs of rush hour, replete with angry motorists, cyclists, and the occasional cow. They have also sent pix of people hanging off the sides of buses and freely admit folk routinely get smashed that way. We’re talking about a country where traffic has an “every man for himself” quality we Americans can barely comprehend.
Achieving affordable private transportation in developing nations is definitely a need, but I have my doubts about this one. There’s no officially released name or set of specs for the project, but we’ll keep an eye out for details as they emerge.