The Tata Nano car is one of the cheapest automobiles ever developed. In India, the price was reported to be equivalent to about 2500 American dollars. It is supposed to be introduced in the United States in the next two years.
However sales have dropped 85% in India since last year.
You see there have been a number of unexplained fires like the one above.
It has dampened enthusiasm for the vehicle considerably.
The U.S. model was to have cost more than double the Indian price because of the cost of meeting American safety standards. Perhaps those standards would have prevented this kind of incident but we may never know.
James Pilant
Pilant's Business Ethics Blog 
Most of the fires dealing with the Tato Nano involve the poorly designed fuel system and exhaust system. There have been a few cases where the fuel line will come off or rupture. Because of how the car is designed, when the fuel line ruptures, it tends to spew the fuel on the hot exhaust manifolds. Not good.
But, Tata Motors is still insisting that their cars are safe. I guess they are taking the “lets ignore the problem and eventually it will go away” strategy.
We learned all about this car in one of my engineering classes as an example of what NOT to do as an engineer. That auto system has so many issues.
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Thanks for the information. It seemed so promising when it first came out. A little ethics might have helped the process.
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My best guess is that the idea was to design the car to be as cheap as possible and still function. I’m sure the cost constraints really tied the hands of the design engineers and “forced” them to cut corners in safety. It is unethical, however, for an engineer to sign off on a design that he/she knows is unsafe.
Unfortunately, places like India lack the infrastructure to effectively regulate and monitor the design, manufacturing, and overall business practices of its citizenry and companies. It is common practice for companies based in India or Thailand to outright lie about the products they are selling.
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Did you learn about another product where they lied so I could use it in a post?
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