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Product liability issues are always quite tricky for companies. Even though child buggies are not really high-tech products, and safety problems should not come out unexpected, even established companies often mismanage the process.

In India, where two-wheelers represent the most common transportation means, Tata Motors saw the need to come up with a safer kind of transportation. In addition to this safety issue, personal transport is also problematic because of the rare availability of public transportation . Therefore, Tata Motors introduced the People's Car, called the Nano. This disruptive product innovation will surely have significant effects on the small-car segment.

Toyota has agreed to invest $50m in Tesla, the Californian builder of battery-powered cars, as it seeks to extend the dominance it has built in petrol-electric hybrids into the next generation of green vehicles. The deal announced on Thursday makes Toyota the second big global automaker to invest in Tesla, a six-year-old startup founded by Elon Musk, creator of the internet payment service PayPal, and backed by other Silicon Valley luminaries such as Google's founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin. The deal could help Toyota repair its reputation in the US after a series of safety problems that have forced it to recall millions of its cars, pay a $16.4m fine and endure multiple investigations by Congress. Toyota has built a big lead in low-emission cars with its Prius hybrid, which went on sale in 1997, and is by far the best-selling alternative to standard petrol-only vehicles. But some other carmakers are preparing to try and leap-frog Toyota by introducing battery-only cars.