A taxi operator claims that a new Tata Nano caught fire that highlights Sri Lanka’s first such episode, though incidents about the Nano catching fire isn’t new in India.
Operations Manager for Budget Taxi, Suranga, says a brand new Nano was seen in flames just after a passenger was dropped by a driver in Colombo. The incident was reported on Friday of last week.
The Nano, which is known as the cheapest car in the world, is produced by Tata Motors who were unavailable for further comments regarding the incident.
Suranga describes the driver to have felt hot air steaming out from air conditioning vents followed by a smoky rear engine of the Tata Nano.
Budget taxi carries out its operations with a total of 75 Tata Nano cars and reported none to have got hurt, but that the Nano was completely written off.
A spokesman from Budget Taxi reported they hadn’t found out the cause for the Nano catching fire in Colombo.
Soon after Tata Nano’s inception in India last year, there are as many as 5 cases reported so far of the small car catching fire. According to the company’s report in May 2010, they claimed they had probed into the fire incidents through a specialist team that failed to detect any defects regarding its manufacturing and that Nano was an absolutely safe car.
While the report confirmed the Nano to be safe, Tata Motors did offer conduction of pre-emptive tests on all the Nanos sold so far.