Desicritics Comments on Eco Friendly Vehicles: A Case of Misplaced Emphasis?

Comment by ushnishas

Tue, 27 May 2008 02:53:44 EDT

Today in Yahoo, the news is that a Swiss company is working on a solar-powered plane that will carry 300 passengers. Also solar blimps are in the offing.

Comment by ushnishas

Mon, 26 May 2008 00:52:09 EDT

Ayan,Mark, Manohar, and all, you are absolutely right. This decision is a foot in the door. Now we can move forward. It is ridiculous to have so many cars in the cities, as for one we can only move at 15 miles an hour, yet we insist on cars that can go 100 miles an hour. Secondly as all these cars waste a tremendous amount of fuel, the pollution wreaks hell on our health. Now they have invented a car that runs on water. See http://ezinearticles.com/?Car-Powered-by-Water&id=1165335 Undoubtedly we should take advantage of this.

Comment by ushnishas

Mon, 26 May 2008 00:52:04 EDT

Comment by ushnishas

Mon, 26 May 2008 00:51:09 EDT

Ayan,Mark, Manohar, and all, you are absolutely right. This decision is a foot in the door. Now we can move forward. It is ridiculous to have so many cars in the cities, as for one we can only move at 15 miles an hour, yet we insist on cars that can go 100 miles anhour. Secondly as all these cars yet waste a tremendous amount of fuel, the pollution wreaks hell on our health. Now they have invented a car that runs on water. See http://ezinearticles.com/?Car-Powered-by-Water&id=1165335 Undoubtedly we should take advantage of this.

Comment by Manohar Akula

Sun, 25 May 2008 16:21:41 EDT

There is an important concept in engineering called modularization. This is wikipedia's description. "A Module is a self-contained component of a system, which has a well-defined interface to the other components; something is modular if it uses modules which can be interchanged as units without disassembly of the module... once the module exists, it can easily be connected to or disconnected from the system." This concept is used in electric vehicles. The vehicle and the power plant are separate modules. There is an advantage in doing this. The cause of pollution is now just one power plant, rather than millions of vehicles. All efforts in reducing pollution can be localized to the power plant. It will be a lot less hassle than involving millions of people, which by the way, every vote seeking political party is unwilling to. There is also an immediate benefit from using electric vehicles. Cities will be rid of a lot of pollution - both emmisive and noise. And by Jove, we need this badly.

Comment by Mark

Wed, 14 May 2008 13:11:43 EDT

Yes, "eco-car" manufacturers like to talk of tail-pipe emissions as though they represented the entire ecological burden of powering the vehicles. Your analysis is spot-on. The more important and interesting question, though, is whether cars (as we currently conceive and create them) make any sense at all in a developing Twenty-First Century society. I have argued, on purely non-environmental grounds, that India's current automobile fetish is emblematic of the retrograde thinking that will leave it mired in mediocrity, notwithstanding its awesome opportunity and astounding potential to develop into a world-leading economy. But, more in line with this discussion, consider the following rough analysis (based on 2004 U.S. data). With an average passenger vehicle weight of 1844 kg, and average total passenger weight of 110 kg (conservative estimate, since most vehicles are single occupancy most of the time), less than six percent of the petrol we consume to move us from place-to-place actually moves us. Move than 94 percent of the fuel is needed to move the car. In what other commercial realm would we tolerate a solution with this astonishing inefficiency? India doesn't need more cars; it needs fewer cars. India already has one of the world's most efficient last-mile transportation solutions in the autorickshaw. With faster, safer, cleaner, more convenient, more efficient public transportation -- coupled with non-privately owned personal transportation, like the autorickshaw or other efficient point-to-point solutions -- India could show the world how a sustainable paradigm for intra-urban transportation, which produces a much higher quality of life for all, is already within our technological capability. The only problem: India will never do that. Sad.

Comment by Kim

Wed, 14 May 2008 13:10:35 EDT

You have posed some interesting questions. I hope the powers that be can come up with the answers soon. Else the only people who will be able to use the electricity powered cars would be those who have the benefit of free electricity in India - politicians and their slum/rural vote banks

Comment by Brajesh

Wed, 14 May 2008 10:59:01 EDT

Another classic case of our government looking through a microscope where a helicopter view is required - this is true of most development projects - while one can not completely eliminate the harmful effects of "development" growing economies like ours shouldn't repeat the mistake of a US or closer on the development scale - China. we all know the struggle on pollution there ... I think the facts can be debated - but i think all will agree that our government seems to be too caught up with the GDP growth number rather than quality of growth ... and that is worrying ...

Comment by Krips

Tue, 13 May 2008 15:05:38 EDT

The mathematical proof as mentioned in Wiki is based on calculations for USA where a major part of the energy comes from renewable sources. In India, while I don't have the exact numbers, the power plants are mainly hydrocarbon based. We have yet to move on to wind, solar, nuclear sources of energy. Also while the article does have citations, not all the figures have citations. "at $1.25/gal a gasoline vehicle will go 18 miles (29 km)" Doesn't hold good in our case either as American preference for SUV's is legendary while Indians are more mileage conscious Then we have the issue of transmission losses in India are one of the highest in the world. Conversion losses as pointed out by FF also need to be taken into consideration But more importantly we are a energy deficient country. When people don't have power for domestic purposes due to load shedding can we afford to take on the burden of electric vehicles? Load shedding of upto 12 hours a day are not uncommon during summer months. There are villages in India where power has still not reached after 60 years of independence. Also people refuse to pay more for electricity to private operators providing electricity as witnessed by the agitations against pricing policy in Bombay / Delhi. It would then fall upon the govt to subsidize power from tax payers money and what not. In such a case, have we really examined all the likely side effects of promoting electric vehicles or are we getting carried away by marketing hype?

Comment by FF

Tue, 13 May 2008 06:27:30 EDT

I too have thought of it for long time. In fact going by the law of entropy, the free energy available(delta G) should definitely decreases if it is converted from one form to other. In this case Heat -> Mechanical -> Electricity -> less (loss in transmission + loss in storage in battries) -> mechanical energy as compared to Heat -> Mechanical. Even if each stage is 80% efficent in conversion we still have loss of about 30% in case of electric route. Or am I missing something?

Comment by Ayan Roy

Tue, 13 May 2008 05:58:20 EDT

Hmm, good point, BUT, the pollution caused due to generation of electricity (in a thermal power plant, say) needed to CHARGE the electric car battery, per km, is FAR LESSER that the pollution caused due to burning fuel in a fossil fuel driven car, per km. This has been proved mathematically. Electric cars are far efficient compared to fuel driven cars, and their carbon footprint is lesser too. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car for the mathematical proofs, which is a bit involving. Love and peace to all, Ayan

Comment by Susan

Mon, 12 May 2008 23:10:44 EDT

Biofuel is just a bad idea.... :(