let me tell you shooting conditions are tough this is like Le Mans plus cows, minus a
sanctioning body. Absolutely nothing prepared me for what it's like driving
across India
I'm Alex Roy, I'm Ed Niedermeyer and we're here at beautiful downtown Chennai
on the east coast of India about to drive this Renault kwid almost a
thousand miles to the west coast to Mumbai previously known as Bombay did
you know that? -- I did know that. I usually cover autonomous vehicles for the drive
but there's no better place to experience human driving than here in
India. To an outsider it looks like complete chaos something that at least
today no machine could possibly learn. Can two Americans who've never been to
India actually make it cross country given the incredible traffic the absence
of any traffic law it seems and the cows. This is such a bad idea. Here in
the beautiful downtown Chennai about to go to Renault dealership to see what
it's like to get a new car. Oh wait who's this. One of the best things about
India is that if you're an animal lover especially a lover of cows you get this
cows everywhere everywhere
this is something else I'm the principal of Renault
children meet the delivery coordinator so what you first see is that they'll
first unveil the car so we'll have like a gray satin power which is covering the
car and then we'll do a small which our ceremony and which is basically to
welcome the new member of the family so it's basically to give good luck and
prosperity to the family and under each of the tyre you see and lemon so
basically our sellers we start the engine they'll run the lemons over till
dedicate all the bad omens and bad eyes and all of that so that's a belief of
Indians and a'right after that what we did was we cut a cake for them to
welcome into the Renault family and then there's a service advisor who give us a
brief about how to drive the car and about the service of the car and so on
you ever get that feeling like these chicanes exist only so the police
can sell advertising on the chicane barriers.
-- I would rather cops work off the advertising business model than the
traffic ticket model. What makes the Kwid great, value meter absolutely 100 percent
absolutely and so, the Tata Nano
is a $4,000 car -- That looks like a $2,000 car -- Which of course was what its
price point was supposed to be at a certain point when you imagine what a
car that starts at $4,000 would be like you don't imagine this your imagine is
gonna be jump but actually try yeah I mean like a Tata Nano exactly which we
have seen some of those on the road here and let me tell you I would be terrified
let's talk about what you get for $4,000 so you get open an 800cc motor for the
manual transmission five speeds and a truck and four wheels it's more like a
big hacker has twice as much cargo capacity as like the other cars in its
price range and this is the option of primer edition is that it has a 1 liter
engine yep I think spelling nineties
if I lived in India I would absolutely be happy on in this car
yeah and that's the thing is you know the person we're driving is about $8,500
so quite a bit more and honestly everything I like about this car you can
get with two option boxes as the 1 litre engine is is the option box I've
acknowledged it I check first and then AC
let me tell you shooting conditions are tough the GoPros are all overheating
it's well over 100 degrees the in-car power is well it's got one power plug we
have a long way to go literally any time we make to Mumbai will be a record at
this point I just want to get there in one piece
Check Point to somewhere a few hours west of Chennai I can't say it's been a
tough Drive I'm suffering some kind of ailment and Sweetie Meyers taking over
we are getting coconut water which is probably very hygienic it's 5:40 p.m.
local we're less than halfway to Hubli which is less than halfway to Mumbai
which means that we're barely a quarter of the way and we've been on the road
for 10 hours every electronic device I've got has overheated the kwid is an
amazing car but it has one problem it only has one 12-volt outlet and one USB
port and it charges devices very very very slowly other than that it's one of
the best cars I've ever driven that's a good thing because I'm gonna be spending
the next 20 hours in it arriving at least 12 to 15 hours behind schedule in
Mumbai
somewhere between 1/2 and 3/5 the way to the halfway point ooh bleep we're gonna
have to stop tonight there's no way we can go all the way to Mumbai in one shot
the traffic in India is just absolutely too terrible
luckily our convoy which includes our support vehicle and another quit is with
us I grew up in New York City I thought I'd seen everything I've been in Mexico
Thailand Morocco absolutely nothing prepared food for what it's like driving
across India 9 o'clock 13 hours after leaving Chennai we're so far behind I've
lost track we're gonna stop in Hubli overnight which is halfway of the entire
distance I thought I could drive alone before I arrived in India thank goodness
Peter Meyers here and we've got support vehicle and a guide car this is like l'm
all plus cows - a sanctioning body indian drivers are the least law-abiding
but possibly the best in the world
definitely feels like the middle lane is the safest doesn't it laughs lane has
people with like tractors with no lights people and the right lane has tractors
with no lights oncoming cars and people on scooters
yeah we literally just had someone help me tell you the driving I just saw him
do absolutely terrified me I kilometers which is 70 80 miles an hour which is
about the maximum comfortable speed in this car when I say comfortable I mean I
would have I've been sleeping through it I would have been happy that was which
you were earlier by the way let's let's end this conversation
I'm awake now so just like the freeway thing I was I'm so done with that this
is fresh
machine learned that a fight
hey is this it it is
Wow we've arrived in Hubli Niedermayer did an incredible job of driving that
last stage especially we saw it especially after the support team lost
us and took off or disappeared and we now have game of Google Maps which was
pretty hairy that that last thing I've been to Morocco and Thailand and Baja
let me try I've never seen it a fight break out in the street that almost in
Kolff the car that was some hairy hairy intersection with absolutely zero
signage no lights or nothing just kind of go out into it you kind of go around
giant bus and someone coming let's just say I'm really glad you were driving
here in whom Bali India they're many amazing things to see all of which I've
missed because I've arrived five hours ago and I've got to leave from Mumbai
however there is this Treat in the penthouse of the president hotel
taxidermy as you know I love taxidermy there's no higher love of nature than
taxidermy and now it's just a big plush toy
let me say it is not a modern country this is a real superhighway in here like
I figure in sentence 200 kilometers from Mumbai and I couldn't help but notice
this gas stations lovely architecture also that this is the petrol side
that's the diesel side all you meiotic drivers are slow car fast momentum car
use every bit of speed in road you're talking about you've driven
anything in India on an open
I can't go back to racing I cannot believe we're actually racing what is
going on in India literally everybody is basically driving their cart
the South Country the last stretch before reaching Mumbai is no less
intense as the roads improved but the car continues to perform without so much
as a hiccup it's clear this is a car designed and marketed to the very
specific needs of India tough minimalist and affordable and definitely not
autonomous this is what ever a no-quit looks like after driving a thousand
miles across India the car in perfectly but nothing and I mean nothing could
have prepared me us to automotive journalists with racing experience but
what it was like to drive from Chennai to Mumbai between the cows the
jaywalkers the road conditions the other drivers the monsoons this was absolutely
the most difficult thing I've ever done in my life in a car and it could not
have been done without this Renault kwid but the real hero of the story is
actually the driver of the second Renault kwid the car that actually beat
us at every stage all the way across India to the finish line of Mumbai and
the driver of that car is Sen seal Kumar and let me tell you a sense he'll know
rain Karthikeyan is a coward absolutely without a question the greatest driver
in India has to be you I've never been beaten in a head-to-head chase like this
one all my respect all my respect brother seriously the man
after two days in almost a thousand miles of barely contained chaos I've
never been so sure about how good human drivers can be in the words of yuan Musk
humans are underrated Silicon Valley is investing billions of dollars in
self-driving cars some think they're inevitable and I completely agree
the problem with self-driving cars are the edge cases the things you cannot
predict things like a row of ducks in the Sahara 48 hours in India made it
very clear to me that this entire country is an edge case you could even
call it an edge country however long it takes to develop self-driving cars for
the US market in India add 20 years actually add 50 based on what I've been
told by people working on the problem here it could be a hundred
you