That’s right. Indian automobile manufacturer Tata has announced its newest model, nick-named “The People’s Car,” the Tata Nano will retail for around $2,500.

The Nano is intended not for heavy drivers, but rather for the masses in India who never had a car, but would use it to shuttle to and from work every day.

In fact, the car would officially top out at 75mph, but anything over 45mph would see the thing deteriorate much more rapidly than intended, because they used cheaper parts. I mean, it’s a $2,500 car, for Pete’s sake… how much wear and tear did you think it could handle? I half expect the thing to be made of aluminum foil.

The car would also fail U.S. emissions tests, so put your checkbook away for now. Heck, it’s likely to fail emissions tests in India when that country adopts tougher standards (as they’re expected to within a few years).

From the article:

“Driving the cost-cutting were Tata’s engineers, who in an earlier project questioned whether their trucks really needed all four brake pads or could make do with three. As they built Tata’s new car, for about half the price of the next-cheapest Indian alternative, their guiding philosophy was: Do we really need that?”

Man, do you really want to buy a car whose manufacturer’s philosophy is “Do we really need that”?! I don’t. I mean, I’m as much in favor of cheaper cars as the next guy, but let’s not forget that “you get what you pay for.” I don’t want my surgeon digging around in my body saying “Does he really need that?” Likewise, I sort of like a lot of the features my car has–such as having all four brake pads–even if it cost me 10 times what the Nano would.

So why am I writing about this mega-cheap car if I think it’s such a bad idea? Well, I think it’s a bad idea for me to buy one. And it’s probably a bad idea for you to buy one too. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea in principle. There are a lot of folks in India who can now afford transportation, and that’s a good thing.

Also, this car is expected to revolutionize the auto-manufacturing industry…forcing Big Auto to completely reinvent the way they build cars. Consumers are likely to demand cheaper and cheaper vehicles, and car makers are going to meet that need.

Of course, this comes on the heels of GM’s proclamation that self-driving cars will be on the market within 10 years. So we sort of have conflicting ambitions here in the world of car makers. On one end, they’re working feverishly to develop insanely low-priced economy cars for the masses. On the other end, they’re working on robot cars from science fiction movies (and, I’m just guessing here, but I bet those won’t be cheap).

Personally, I’m holding out for the best of both worlds. I want a robot self-driving car whose manufacture built it on the slogan of “do we really need that?” so that it’s super cheap. It’d be like the most flimsy robot car on the road, probably made of cardboard….but hey…it’s a robot car!!