Of cars, air pollution and electric vehicle (EV)


Sometime back, Shirish Sambre, a car engineer, sent me a WhatsApp note that the Government should consider installing electric vehicle (EV) kits for the 10-year old diesel and 15-year old petrol cars, in case these are in excellent conditions, instead of condemning them as scrap as required by National Green Tribunal (NGT), the judicial body empowered to judge the environmental cases. This suggestion is excellent. The cars will serve the purpose of environment friendly transport avoiding their journey to the heap of scraps which otherwise pollutes the land, jeopardizes the health of cleaners and becomes a disposal issue in view of limited space. This indeed set the ball rolling as I remembered the speech of Maneka Gandhi in our Institute’s auditorium on environmental pollution due to cars, many years ago. At that time, I was quite junior, earning a meagre salary, but dreaming of owning a second-hand car for the safety of my family and to fulfilling my ambition of owning one. Ms Gandhi’s speech especially related to pollution due to old cars gave me impression that she would like these second-hand car market to go away as these cars are more menace, polluting and may-be-not-road-worthy. Fortunately, I bought my first car, second-hand in 1990s. It served the purpose quite satisfactorily. The second-hand car market continues to flourish, with certification and refinancing too. But one thing that lingers in my mind is that rich elite class that can afford to buy new cars at regular interval does not get its conscience pricked, every time it sells old car adding to the heap of second-hand vehicles, and lecturing others on the pollution. And this class has its own interest of keeping goodies for itself. It does not want others to enjoy these comforts, recycled, second-hand; giving alibi of air pollution.
As the car industry zoomed and added to the traffic congestion over the years, NGT in recent times came up with the unique solution to reduce the air pollution. It required the 10-year diesel cars and 15-year petrol cars to be scrapped.
The first person I talked about is politician and is now in the Government. And the second is the judicial institution. Both wants that air pollution should be checked by restricting use of old cars, not by decreasing total number of cars on road, indirectly helping the car industry to remain in high turnover state.
Role of NGT in using the blanket ban on the 10-year old diesel and the 15-year old petrol cars is quite intriguing to me. How did it decide the longevity of cars? I have a 1198 cc car which is 7-year old and has ran for only 35,000 km. In the next 8 years, I don’t think of its exceeding cumulative mileage of more than 75,000 km. It will be just fine even later, as it is maintained well. Normally, car engines don’t give away even after 1,50,000 km. Yet, at the end of 15-year period, my car will have to be scrapped. While buying the car, I was given a warranty of engine that combined usage in terms of mileage and length of use. But for NGT, mileage of car run or for that matter car’s condition is of no import. And it all boils down as to whom justice is done.


Comments

  1. Shirish27 July 2019 at 08:38

    This concept is under active implementation by some firm in Pune. They are retrofitting EV kit on older petrol engine cars. Your article is most appropriate n just.👍👌

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How robust is our pesticide policy? A case of waiting period or post-harvest interval for safe consumption of produce

Image
Top: Saurashtra farmer who was keen to offer us a gift of maize, but for spray a day before; Bottom: Ready to spray with mixture on cotton.   As early as 1985, India recognised importance of integrated pest management to achieving optimal crop protection in its agricultural policy. This policy also envisaged reduction in the use of synthetic pesticides and increase in eco-friendly safe tactics in the agroecosystem. Safety to all is pivotal of crop protection policy. However, synthetic pesticides remained the bulwark of integrated pest management in agriculture. In fact, consumption of synthetic pesticides has increased over the past two decades from about 45,000 tons to about 60,000 tons. And hence, it has become necessary that we use pesticides judiciously so that farmers save their farm produce from the ravages of pests and at the same time, consumers get foodgrains and other farm produce that are safe to eat. Some years back, I was reading the data on major uses of pesticides, e
Read more

Probit Analysis of bioassays: Sure, you are seriously talking about it

Image
    After reviewing a manuscript, I thought of talking to my friend who works in the prestigious Government institution to know as to how he estimates various parameters of toxicity like LC50, fiducial limits [FL] or Confidence intervals [CI], intercept. And this reminded me of my days as a M.Sc. student when I would do these calculations using a Facit® manual calculator on a tabulated sheet that our insect toxicology teacher, Dr. B.S. Atri would provide us. It was tedious work involving filling of columns like concentrations, log concentrations, % mortality, their transformation into probits, weighting coefficients, empirical probits, expected probits, working probits and other parameters meticulously up to three decimal points until we came to an equation, y=a+bx, where y is 5.0, a, an intercept and b, a slope and x (log LC50) is what we will calculate. For 95% FL, we used two equations, m1=m-1.96 √ V and m2=m+.6 √ V where m1, m2, lower and upper FLs of LC50, √ square root of varian
Read more

Pheromone-based Crop Protection: Mating Disruption technology needs many researchable inputs to succeed sustainably

Image
Moths of the pink bollworm in the pheromone trap Farmers' gathering: pheromone MD formulation, PB knot tied on stem of cotton larva of the pink bollworm feeding inside the raw cotton boll It was in mid-1980s and early 1990s that the American bollworm caused havoc to cotton production in the country leading some farmers to commit suicides in the erstwhile state of Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and others, as they had taken loans in expectation of bumper yields. Farmers did not believe that this bollworm can be a key pest, reducing their cotton production significantly. The pest insect had developed resistance to most of insecticides used in cotton and thrived well. Insecticide-based control of pests was a big failure, affecting environment and health of all stakeholders. Everyone scrambled for solution. Botanicals like neem, microbials like nucleopolyhedrosis virus, and parasites like Trichogramma chilonis were reported to be alternate to insecticides. The need-based use of insect
Read more