How safe is the Nano?
As safe as it should be, is the right answer. But we dug deeper!
By showing a European version of the Nano (very imaginatively called... er... Europa) at the Geneva Motor Show in March, Tata Motors was sending a strong statement about the safety features incorporated into the Nano body shell. The right place to begin when we are talking about the safety of the Nano should be the body shell.
Unlike conventional cars, the Nano is not built as a 'body on chassis' vehicle. Nor is it built like most modern cars as a 'monocoque.' Instead, a combination of a 'space frame' and a 'monocoque' is employed to ensure that the resulting 'mono-volume' body-in-white (the shell minus bonnet, doors and bumper, etc) combines the advantages of both. This shell makes the Nano inherently safer than a simple monocoque.
At this point, we would like to point out that using an extruded aluminium bonded chassis as in the case of the Mercedes-Benz Smart would have been prohibitively expensive -- if safer -- for the Nano application.
Image: Tata Nano | Photograph: Courtesy Tata Motors
Also read: West Bengal regrets losing Nano
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