The Indian auto maker, Tata Motor who is already selling a low cost car, Nano has now started working on another low cost composite car to stand with the Nano. However company has not revealed any data about the launch, company might be waiting get itself settled before launching such a car. Company is currently working on a premium small car that will be based on the redesigned Indica platform and will be arriving earlier than these composite cars.
If we look at the composite vehicle on sale in the global market, then we will find that most of these are made with carbon fiber and are quite costly. In India it may be possible that Tata could use a material called PDP or Poly-diallyl-phthalate to make these cars in order the curb the prices, but then also it will cost more than Nano. The composite car will have lot of advantage over the traditional cars like lesser weight, more fuel efficiency. And these materials can reduce cost way down from the traditional aluminum and steel cars.
These days aluminum is being used extensively for building chassis of the vehicles. Range Rover Evoque is the recent example of the use of all aluminum body, which in turn has helped the new generation Evoque to become lighter, balanced and better fuel efficient. The composite car will be much easier to build. It will be lighter, more fuel efficient, safer and quite simple to build. It will have about 25 molds that will join together to form the body, unlike the traditional car that comes out of over 500 parts and pieces joined together to build its metallic body.
The low cost composite material platform will be modular also. People close to the company says that at first the main motive of the company is to work with the conventional technology rather than focusing on the composites to stabilize and enhance its current product offerings.
The man behind the idea is car is Marcello Gandini, a famous Italian designer who is well known for the use of composites in the supercars such as Lamborghini’s Countach and Miura. Tata is believed to have acquired the technology and design from Gandini.