[GeekSrik]

I was surprised at this article which specified that tata's one lakh car will be more of plastic than what one can think of here in this forum. Also they mention the sub $3000 car for the FEARLESS

read this thread: India's Tata Motors developing uber-cheap plastic automobile - Engadget

[dadu]

Does someone remember the car 'Dolphin' which failed misreably, the body was made out of ABS.

[Trapezio]

There are industrial plastic which are as tough as steel if not more. The Renaults have plastic panels. I have seen once a salesman demonstrating its toughness to a prospective customer by literally kicking on a Renault Scenic with boots. It was fine! Try doing that on a WagonR. It will look like one of those cheese cubes bitten by Jerry in Tom & Jerry!

A lot depends on the quality of plastic though. You would be surprised to see thw list of cars which use plastic bumpers etc!

The Dolphin is an entirely different story in a different age...

[ST7677]

Well a lot can depend on the finish and price.
Things have changed in last 20 years (that's when Dolphins were there, aren;t they). Today it is possible to get metal like finish on fiber parts.

Even REVA the electric car is built of fibre body and does look good.

[cypher]

Originally Posted by dadu

Does someone remember the car 'Dolphin' which failed misreably, the body was made out of ABS.

This may sound dumb, but what is "ABS"?

[abhilashvk]

A lot depends on the quality of plastic though. You would be surprised to see thw list of cars which use plastic bumpers etc!

I thought all the modern cars had plastic bumpers - with body colour painted. I dont know of cars in US though.

[indivic]

Originally Posted by cypher

This may sound dumb, but what is "ABS"?

Don't know if I got the spelling correct - ABS is acrylonitrile butadiene styrene,

but I thought the Dolphin shell was made from FRP of fibre reinforced plastic...just my view

[directinjection]

A plastic body was seriously explored by Tata at one stage.
They even had discussions with GE in this regard.
However, the idea was given up later, most probably for cost reasons. The car as it exists now is made primarily of steel, just like other cars. Since the car's design and specifications have been 'frozen', it is unlikely that the final product would be any different.

[revved_up]

Originally Posted by cypher

This may sound dumb, but what is "ABS"?

ABS = Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene

For more details check : Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cheers

[dadu]

Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), its a kind of plastic, tough, lightweight and cheaper to produce. In case of Dolphin it was also said at that time that in case of slight dents you can bring it back by heating the dent. It was manufactured by Sipani Automobiles in early 80's but bombed big time.

Originally Posted by cypher

This may sound dumb, but what is "ABS"?

[mail4ajo]

I remember one Kit car which was to be released in India called the Quantum with a Ford engine was also made from ABS or FRP. Knocking the body with a hammer was the demostration used by the makers.

[rubin2006]

Plastic car can have a good built but the built qulality and finish is not as major issue with TATA as the issues of reliabilty

[Mayavi]

Originally Posted by GeekSrik

I was surprised at this article which specified that tata's one lakh car will be more of plastic than what one can think of here in this forum. Also they mention the sub $3000 car for the FEARLESS

read this thread: India's Tata Motors developing uber-cheap plastic automobile - Engadget

Aaah... you can smell ignorance in that report from a mile away.Those guys are living atleast three years in ther past. The cheap plastic part was pulled out of that reporters nether areas. Indeed TATA's one lakh car was to be built of plastic utilizing super glue instead of welds making it light, cheap to manufacture and more durable. But these are not your everyday plastic parts that you see used in the car interiors but high quality plastics. Well, atleast that was Ratan Tata's dream. Unfortunately as noted in recent a interview they had to go with metal to save costs and R&D time.

[Mayavi]

Ratan's big passion, though, is the "one lakh" car. (One lakh is 100,000. And that many rupees equals about $2,500.) Since the mid-'90s, he has wanted to develop reliable but supercheap vehicles, a project he believes could ultimately revolutionize the auto industry and make India a major economic power. Tata personally supervised the project and traveled frequently to Tata Motors' development center in Pune to check on progress. Originally he envisioned a fundamentally new kind of vehicle—one made of plastics, for example, that didn't even resemble what we think of today as a car. He concedes that the spartan, oval-shaped model to be launched in early 2008 doesn't meet his lofty aims. It's made of steel. And it looks like, well, a car. To get the price to $2,500, engineers shrunk the size and stripped out frills such as reclining seats and a radio. "There is not a lot of innovation," he says. "We didn't reinvent the business."

That is not as much innovation as originally envisaged but according to the people in the know, there are more innovative technologies that went into the 1 lakh car than your regular B or C segment cars.

[theMAG]

I remember reading that while its body is steel, cost-cutting would be in the form of 9 welds thruout.