Forum Topic

India's exploding car industry and market

Has anybody been watching the daily reports from India on the Channel4 news this week at 7.00pm? It’s breathtaking how their economy and industry is developing. Last night I was struck by an item on their car industry and its exploding growth. There was a clear example of how the developing countries of China and India will significantly add to the environmental damage caused by carbon emissions as they are currently exempt (as developing countries) from the same emissions controls as the developed countries.For example they had the chairman of Tata Motors talking about his planned new $2,000 car to be launched in 2008. It is aimed at those people who couldn’t afford cars and most likely owned bikes, a big market. It is a bit like what the Trabant was in Eastern Europe, which was just to get more people on the roads.It is a petrol driven car, so this is going to seriously increase the pollution on the Indian roads. There is also the concern for the traffic jams on the inadequate road infrastructure. I suppose when the traffic builds it will force the government to build a better transport infrastructure and maybe call for Ken Livingstone for his experience on Congestion Charging?

Duncan Walker ● 6604d8 Comments

Good point David, about emissions still needed for creating the compressed air. This caused me to read more about this. It still looks like a good initiative. There was an interesting discussion on the site: http://www.celsias.com/blog/2007/02/23/air-car-tantalisingly-close/One comment there was: "A solution that moves pollution away from individual vehicles is always preferable, because it is easier to implement stricter pollution controls in central power generation facilities than it would be to do the same for vehicles across the country, not to mention that as newer, possibly cleaner forms of energy production are developed, it will be easier to incrementally upgrade centralized facilities to use such methods, without requiring any changes at all to the automobiles which could already be out there."Good luck to the developers.

Duncan Walker ● 6603d

Hi Duncan,yes, of course we should reduce manmade emission even though it's quite low. As you said, it disturbs the balance.I'm currently on holiday, driving (sorry! But I don't have a car, it's just rented) around in Scotland, with limited access to internet (and limited willingness), but a quick search found this article that seems to be quite good. Don't know whether it's biased or not, but WHEN do one know that anyway... Doesn't mention anything about the forest though sorry.http://communities.canada.com/nationalpost/blogs/gunter/archive/2007/04/10/global-warming-do-the-math.aspx

Jorgen Molna ● 6603d

This car is not "air powered" in the proper sense of the words.  It is powered by whatever fuel is used to provide the power to drive the compressor that supplies the compressed air to the storage tanks.  The air is simply the working fluid - cf: steam in steam engines.  The amount of energy used to propel the vehicle should be measured against other forms of engine to assess the relative efficiencies.  The enormous benefit would be in the lack of street level emissions, though emissions will have to occur at the (fossil fuel) power generating source.The crash implications sounded a bit glossed over.  Were an air tank at 150 bar to split (as said in the movie clip) it would release the entire stored energy almost instantaneously, which is a fair definition of an explosion.  Pressure vessels are tested to a pressure higher than their maximum working pressure by using water, which is virtually incompressible, and therefore stores no energy, for this very reason.

David Biles ● 6604d

Jorgen, I find all the information confusing at times. Have you any website that explains this point clearly?I read that even though man-made emissions were only 3-5% they have disrupted a natural balance and these extra emissions have accumulated and are causing the problem. So are you saying that to stop deforestation, and even to increase the forest acerage, it would compensate for any man-made emissions?

Duncan Walker ● 6604d

Well put Jorgan but most of the world would have us believe that we are all DOOMED.

Helen Fogarth ● 6604d

Only 5% of the worlds CO2 emission is human-made, the rest 95% is natural. Even if all the people in China and India got a car it wouldn't do much damage.Don't let the politicians trick you.The biggest threat to the world is the decreasing amount of forest (not as much the rain forest. It being so important is another myth). That's what I'm really concerned about. Not cars...

Jorgen Molna ● 6604d

does it have a big balloon on the back? and when i saw the title of this thread i was a little worried...   

Jamie Halliday ● 6604d

Now the Tata Motors’ investment in an air-powered car is a better option to reducing the impact on the environment.The air-powered car looks like an interesting development to reduce car emissions, and the French company MDI http://www.theaircar.com/ , look like they have production vehicles. Have a look at the video of it:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-A3XHFT5qcTata Motors has signed a deal with French company MDI, The final car should cost around €4,000 and would have a range of around 300km between refuelling. The cost of a refill would be an almost negligible €1.5 .http://www.itnews.com.au/newsstory.aspx?CIaNID=48160&r=hstory

Duncan Walker ● 6604d