India’s largest car maker Tata – the owner of Jaguar and Land Rover – revealed their new concept car at the Geneva Motor Show. It’s called the Tata Pixel and it’s a proper four-seater city car.
What’s important here is the fact that the Pixel can accommodate four adults.
At the first glance the Pixel appears to be a very posh version of Tata Nano, but there is much more to this car. It has lots of new and innovative features, some of them way too ambitious! Like those doors for example. They are just plain ridiculous to be honest. Tata says they make it easier getting in and out of the car in tight spaces, but they are so big they will hit the roof in any underground parking!
But there some good tricks as well, like the Zero Turn toroidal traction-drive Infinitely Variable Transmission (IVT), which assists rotation of the outer rear wheel forwards and the inner rear wheel backwards, while the front wheels turn at acute angles. The result is a turning circle radius of just 2.6 metres.
The Tata Pixel is also designed to provide a high level of connectivity. Key functions are controlled by the driver’s smart phone, running ‘My Tata Connect’ — the first integrated human-machine interface (HMI) concept from Tata Motors.
‘My Tata Connect’ enables seamless integration of the user’s smartphone or tablet with the vehicle’s infotainment system and also allows controlling key functions of the car. This provides a customised, user friendly, all-in-one touch screen display, while also allowing the driver to remain seamlessly connected to the external world in much the same way as they would be when at home or in the office, listening to favourite songs, internet news and sport or stock updates.
Tata Pixel is powered by a rear-mounted 1.2 litre three-cylinder turbocharged diesel engine, which features low-friction design, featuring variable coolant and oil pump and rapid warm-up technologies. The car itself has optimised aerodynamic drag, low rolling-resistance tyres, stop-start technology, and intelligent battery charging.
All of that is to save fuel, and it manages that beautifully. The Pixle returns European combined cycle (NEDC) fuel economy of 3.4 l/100km and CO2 emissions of just 89g/km. Tata doesn’t mention the power output, maybe because it’s not very impressive!
