Ending a four-year wait and bringing the dream of car ownership closer to millions, Tata Motors today unveiled the "People's Car" at a show here watched by the international automobile industry. Called Nano, the car will cost Rs 1 lakh as promised by the company which also assured meeting all safety and emission norms.

"Since we started the project four years back, there has been a steep increase in input cost but a promise is a promise," said Tata Group chief Ratan Tata after displaying his dream project at the Ninth Auto Expo.

"I observed families riding on two-wheelers — the father driving the scooter, his young kid standing in front of him, his wife seated behind him holding a little baby. It led me to wonder whether one could conceive of a safe, affordable, all-weather form of transport for such a family," Tata said.

"Tata Motors' engineers and designers gave their all for about four years to realise this goal. Today, we indeed have a people's car, which is affordable yet built to meet safety requirements and emission norms, to be fuel efficient and low on emissions. We hope it brings the joy, pride and utility of owning a car to many families who need personal mobility." This small car — Nano is 20 per cent shorter in length than the Maruti 800 but Tata claims it has 21 per cent more space — is powered by a 623 cc rear-mounted engine and will travel 20 km per litre. The car will cost Rs 1 lakh at the dealer-end but attract Value-Added Tax and transportation cost.

Apart from the standard version, Nano will also come in two deluxe models with air conditioning. While critics had been sceptical about the car meeting safety and emission norms, Tata said Nano will meet Bharat Stage-III emission norms and can also meet the stringent Euro 4 norms. The car has also gone through a full frontal crash test as per standard norms, he said.

Tata Motors expects two-wheeler riders to buy the car that costs half as much as those currently in the market. With just 8 people in 1,000 owning a car in India, there is huge potential to upgrade bike and scooter owners who bought about 7 million two-wheelers in 2006-07.

Commerce Minister Kamal Nath said Nano will help the common man shift from two-wheelers to four-wheelers. "It is a proud moment for India. It demonstrates India's technological and entrepreneurial ability. The car will help people move from two-wheeler to four-wheeler and it will leap-frog the two-wheeler. It fulfils the need of the common Indian who aspires to move from a two-wheeler to a four-wheeler," he said.

Tata also allayed fears expressed by environmentalist R K Pachauri and green activist Sunita Narain that a car at that price would add more vehicles, leading to higher pollution. "Pachauri will not have a nightmare and Sunita Narain can also sleep," he said.

On the reasons for choosing the name Nano, Tata said the car was about high technology and small size. He credited the development of Nano to Tata Motors' engineers, and said it was the capability and commitment to innovate that realised the dream. In fact, Tata Motors has applied for 34 patents for aggregate features, such as the two cylinder gasoline with single balancer shaft.

Asked if the company was looking to export the car as well, Tata said: "The first two-three years our focus will be India and see the Indian market appropriately addressed." He did not, however, rule out an overseas launch of the car.

Tata revealed what enabled it to cut down costs and score over the entire global auto industry. "We took the standard Maruti 800 as the base model and worked backwards on how we can reduce costs. We decided and found out that a tight package, that will mean a smaller, meaner car, lighter engine and higher fuel economy will do the trick," Tata said. "The decision to make it a rear engine driven was precisely to reduce the length of the car."

But why did other car makers miss the trick? "I cannot say for others but what is important is whether you have desire strong enough to prevent the odds from overwhelming you," Tata said.

At the site of the plant in Singur, West Bengal, where the first Nano will roll out, it is a race against time. Over 2500 people have been working in two shifts behind a guarded perimeter to complete the factory in time. Soon another shift will be introduced to make up for any backlog in work caused during the last heavy monsoon.

"Work will soon start in three shifts. Over 75 per cent work of the factory is complete and we hope by September of this year the first car will roll out of the factory,"' a top official of West Bengal Industrial Development Corp (WBIDC) told The Indian Express. A major portion of the work involving the setting up of a 230 KV substation on the project site to ensure uninterrupted power supply to the factory and the vendor park has almost been completed by ABB.

In order to save the site from inundation in the future, the state government has revived the 30-year-old Ghiya Kulti irrigation project at a cost of Rs 170 crore.

Next to the 645-acre plot that will have the main car plant, a vendor park is coming up on 290 acres to house the proposed 55 ancillary units. Already, 14 have started setting up theirs. These include Lord Swaraj Paul-owned Caparo Engineering Pvt Ltd, Rasandik Engineering Industries Indian Ltd, Rucha Engineers Pvt Ltd and Sharda Motor Industries Ltd. While Rasandik has plans of investing Rs 55 crore in the first phase of work at the vendor site, Rucha Engineering has committed Rs 50 crore for their facility at the vendor park.

WBIDC has set up a camp office at the project site where so far 2432 persons from displaced families have got their names registered. "The Government, with the help of Tata Motors, will arrange for employment opportunities for them through training and financial assistance," said Samir Rudra, the office-in-charge.