Indian automaker Mahindra & Mahindra is talking to officials in Ohio about the possibility of building a light truck plant there.

The company has said it wants to start selling a small, fuel-efficient diesel-hybrid pickup truck in the U.S. and the Columbus Dispatch newspaper reported today that Ohio state development department officials have confirmed that they've been talking to Mahindra.

The state officials would not confirm that the discussions involved construction of a truck factory.

But Global Vehicles USA, an Alpharetta, Georgia, company that has a U.S. distribution deal with Mahindra, told the newspaper that the company does want to assemble trucks in Ohio from component kits shipped from India.

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India's Tata Motors wants to bring the next generation of its super-affordable Nano car to the European market by 2012, the company's compact car projects director said in an interview with the German magazine Focus.

"We will develop a successor model in four years time, which will meet the Euro 5 emission regulations and the crash standards in Europe," Girish Wagh was quoted as saying in an advance abstract of the article published Sunday and reported by Reuters news service.

Tata unveiled the $2,500 Nano, the world's cheapest car, at the  New Delhi auto show in January and said production of the four-seater would begin lateer this year fat the Tata factory in West Bengal.

Tata has said it will initially produce about 250,000 Nanos and expects eventual annual demand of 1 million units.

Tata Ace could be heading for U.S. as a low-speed electric truck.

Chrysler Corp. and India's Tata Motors reportedly have signed a development deal for Chrysler's neighborhood electric car unit to import and market a new vehicle based on the Tata Ace mini-truck.

While the 1-ton truck uses a 17 horsepower diesel motor in India, the U.S. version would use a battery-electric drivetrain from Chrysler's Global Electric Motors, according to a report this week in India's Business Line magazine.

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Our correspondent tries hydrogen rickshaw on for size.

By Nick Kurczewski, Contributor

NEW DELHI -- Squeezing into the non-existent passenger space of a vehicle built for one turned out to be the easy part.

The driver, seated in the center, and directly behind what looked to be a set of motorcycle handlebars, attempted to fire up the hydrogen-burning engine, again and again. 

A sputter, a grumble from the exhaust, one or two feet of forward motion, and then … nothing.  The bright blue three-wheeler’s one-cylinder two-stroke motor died, and the trike came to an abrupt stop.

India’s hydrogen-powered future faces similar false starts and the occasional stumble.

But the fact that the world’s 3rd largest economy (in purchasing power) has a roadmap for hydrogen in the first place – not to mention a Ministry of New and Renewable Energy – might come as something of a surprise to those who expect the country’s emissions regulations to be woefully outdated.

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