Man, we love our cars. I mean, we LOVE our cars. And by “we”, I mean pretty much everybody.

I was thinking of this recently when I read this blog entry. It’s about the Tata Nano.

Tata is a big industrial corporate entity in India. You (meaning Americans, because I don’t think many non-Amis read this blog… of course, as often as I write these days, not many folks anywhere read this blog!) probably haven’t heard of it, but it’s a huge family of companies. How huge? Well, from the Wikipedia entry on Tata…

The Tata Group has operations in more than 85 countries across six continents and its companies export products and services to 80 nations. The Tata Group comprises 114 companies and subsidiaries in seven business sectors [5], 27 of which are publicly listed. 65.8% of the ownership of Tata Group is held in charitable trusts.[6] Companies which form a major part of the group include Tata Steel, Corus Steel, Tata Motors, Tata Consultancy Services, Tata Technologies, Tata Tea, Titan Industries, Tata Power, Tata Communications, Tata Teleservices, Tata AutoComp Systems Limited and the Taj Hotels.

Tata’s revenues were over $70 billion US last year, which ranks it (if the Tata Group were a single company) in the top 100 companies in the entire world. It’s a little hard to figure profits, because a significant percentage of the group’s companies are held by charitable trusts, but suffice to say it’s a huge company.

The blog item was discussing how Tata has developed the Nano to be a car for the masses. There is a plethora of masses in India, of course; when we talk population, we always think of China, but often forget that India has over a billion people living in a nation that’s roughly one-third the size of the United States.

And those people want cars.

A few years ago, when I was in China and out for dinner with some friends, I was surprised when the locals all expressed heavy interest in buying a car. The other American dude that was there with his date felt the same way as me- why did they all want cars when a combination of the public transit system and the incredbly cheap (by Western standards) taxis work so well for them all? Cars cost a lot of money- cost to buy, insure, maintain, fuel…

But they hit the nail on the head. They said that a car represents FREEDOM. Think back to when you were a teenager and had your first car, or were with a friend in their car. Anytime you wanted, man, you were by yourself. You decided where you were going to go. You weren’t in a classroom (under the control of a teacher) or at work (under control of the boss) or at home (under control of the parents). You had the open road, your choice of where to go and what to do and who to see- and who to fool around with, and even a semi-private place to do it!

To these Beijingers, yeah, sure, the public transit system was pretty good. They had busses and a growing subway system, and since they were all part of the rapidly growing middle class and relatively rich by Chinese standards, jumping into a taxi was no big deal at all- very cheap.

But all that stuff had them reliant upon someone ELSE. The bus driver, or scheduler, or the guy who comes up with the routes. The limited area that the subway serves. The taxi driver.

When we look at a place like India, and the huge pent-up demand they have for cars, progressive types like me might think “that’s absolutely ridiculous of them, to make the same mistakes the United States made.” We think that it’s really dumb for India (or China, or any other emerging economy) to pour huge gobs of money into infrastructure for individual vehicles; they should continue to build trains and go with buses and other forms of mass transit, right?

But we are forgetting the allure of the freedom offered by a car. We’re forgetting what it was like to be someone who could maybe get their own car, and hence have all those decisions in our own hands.

So when I read the blog post, with its question/title “Will This Car Destroy The World?”…

The Tata Nano goes on sale in India next month. At 100,000 rupees ($1,979), it will be the world’s cheapest car. You can learn about the car’s specs at BBC or Reuters, but the basic takeaway is that it’s tiny, fuel-efficient, inexpensive, and destined to be purchased by a lot of people—India, you’ll remember, has about a billion of them.

The concern among environmentalists is that, because the car is so affordable, it will be purchased by so many people that global carbon levels will skyrocket to irreparable levels. That, of course, would be disastrous.

Naw, the Nano won’t destroy the world. India saw total car sales of around 30,000 for the entire YEAR of 2008, and Tata sold over 100,000 Nanos in the first TWO WEEKS it was available. (Most of that was only preorders, of course.) Yeah, the Nano costs under $2,000 (it’s the most stripped-down car you can imagine). But it won’t destroy the world.

Now, our human nature? Our desire for freedom and demand that we can choose our own destiny? Yeah, that might destroy the world. But don’t blame the car.