The Tata Nano has received more publicity than any car launch I can recall. Still, it’s not surprising. A fully-functional car for the equivalent of about 3000 Australian dollars is big news. While a number of writers have pointed out the similarity between the Nano and the Mercedes “Smart”, I reckon a closer analogy is another ultra-cheap car of another age, the Volkswagen Beetle.
Unsurprisingly, there’s been a fair bit of commentary from green groups that the explosion in third-world motoring that cars like the Nano will bring is environmentally unsustainable. Christian Kerr from Crikey (behind their paywall) has used this as an opportunity to indulge in some left-bashing:
The left in the west used to support the aspirations of people in developing nations to a better qualify of life, including better transport…if activists in the West try to deny these people their aspirations, they are guilty of a new eco-imperialism
Kerr and his ilk just don’t seem to get it. When environmentalists say that the expansion of the private car throughout the developing world is a global environmental disaster, it’s not because of some perverse desire to deprive the third world of the benefits of development. It’s because it’s a global environmental disaster. It may be inconvenient, but it’s fact.
Ultimately what is required is that both the developing and the developed world forego petroleum-powered private transport - something “the left” has been pointing out for some time now.
“Ultimately what is required is that both the developing and the developed world forego petroleum-powered private transport - something “the leftâ€? has been pointing out for some time now” No you can’t conclude that all Robert. What is the given is that the mode of transport we collectively achieve is carbon neutral. Some small use of petrol/diesel/LNG powered transport may be consistent with that either permanently or as an interim. Also it is possible that electric powered cars are not carbon neutral. The key thing is the pricing of these fuels ( Quiggers knows). The Tata Nano has to be considered in its use of energy in its total life.
1. It’s carbon cost of construction.
2. It’s use of carbon.
3. the carbon cost of disposal.
It will also be replacing a fleet of existing vehicles ( motorcycles / other small cars of varying vintage etc ) with their life span of carbon cost.
I have lived in Bangladesh for 2 years in the late 90’s….and I can tell you the problem there is immense problems with environmental degradation..i lost my voice after 6 weeks because of running around in baby taxi’s that are using leaded petrol - all environmental disasters waiting to happen - I had to move to a different area because its soo bad - this is a major form of transport in India and Bangladesh and it has been killing the environment for years.
Tell me, the fact that C Kerr is saying this tells me alot about him - He is ok in that he is not as right wing as the dominant Liberals of the far right but this unfortunately says alot about him - he speaks alot of crap Christian - and is not as far up the righter scale as he thinks I suspect…typical rightie just bashing up the Left - I find him quite dissapointing and I just do not think he knows as much as he thinks he does
There is a precedent for this: the post-war UK motoring market. Generally, the poor tended to use motorcycles/sidecars or were sold on some very strange 3 wheelers due to the licensing laws (you could drive a 3 wheeler on a motorcycle license). Most of the odd little 3 wheelers were powered by 2 cylinder villiers engines or other motorcycle hardware. None of them were particularly successful. The UK simply had to get richer and the real motoring revolution didn’t start until cheap/good small cars like the Morris Minor were released. Given Indias relatively poor infrastructure, my guess is petrol or diesel powered vehicles are the only truly affordable transport they can turn to.
Will it be an environmental disaster? If it replaces some of the smellier/more disastrous vehicles currently churning around India, it might not be as bad as we think. The place is full of home-made castoffs from the UK including engine technology that is decidedly pre-WWII in some cases. It’s a bit rich to ask the Indians to invest in (say) more public transport when rich countries like Australia can’t make it work.
Bill: you can’t make a carbon-neutral car powered by petroleum, unless you capture the CO2 out of the exhaust and sequester it later. That applies to cars powered by natural gas, as well.
You can make cars that emit a lot less carbon than present ones, which might be a good interim step.
David: that’s assuming the Nano takes the smoke bombs off the road. Isn’t it more likely that those smoke bombs will just be resold to poorer people?
This attitude is frustrating on two levels.
1. There is significant environmental damage done by the widespread use of petrol vehicles.
2. One of the biggest hurdles in getting developed nations to cut back on usage has been the massive investment and social structuring into such a transport system. Developing countries have an easier path to go down to establish a better system.
Perhaps the developed nations need to provide assistance to help developing ones go down a more ecologically sustainable path. It’s certainly easy to see how such measures could be seen as hypocritical though.
OK, let’s get quantitative for a while:
Robert, do we have reliable estimates for the parameters Bill O’Slatter lists? e.g. do we have them for the following vehicles used in Australia:
small motorcycles
heavy motorcycles
small sedans
medium sedans
heavy sedans, station wagons
minibuses
large city buses
long distance coaches
small trucks
large trucks
huge bloody trucks
B-doubles
medium farm tractors
huge bloody combine harvesters
whopping great vehiclesa used in open cut mining (e.g. Pilbara)
bicycles
diesel passenger trains
diesel freight trains
electric trains
street trams,
etc
because if we don’t even know the carbon emissions of vehicles we and our Aussie industries use, it’s a bit previous to be condemning the latest Indian cars, isn’t it?
BTW, is anyone computing actual greenhouse effects (rather than CO2 emissions in tonnes)? I ask this because methane - good old CH4 I think, has as much C per molecule as CO2, but - correct me if this is inaccurate - cause something like 25 TIMES as much ‘greenhouse’ effect, molecule for molecule, or gram for gram, as does CO2. And this would be relevant to countries that have many bulls, cows - sacred or otherwise - in their C-emitting inventory.
Not sure about donkeys, mules and horses, used in transport: are they prodigious methane emitters too?
Other quantitative aspects:
i) greenhouse emissions per passenger km
ii) emission reduction per litre of hydrocarbon fuel?
iii) substitution by new fuels?
iv) fuel efficiency?
v) energy losses through stop/start traffic conditions?
vi) lightweight chassis construction?
vii) energy efficiency of construction?
viii) embodied energy in construction of roads, rail lines, tram tracks
ix) energy used in vehicle maintenance
x) recycling - potential or actual - of old vehicles or parts, e.g. worn tyres, batteries
Not setting ‘homework’, just wondering whether some well-informed group has done such comparisons.
If you have information on any of
Bill raises a key point on pricing of fuels. I fear there may be a lot of very angry Indians who have bought their 1 lakh car and find that, within a very few years, they simply cannot afford to buy the petrol to run them anymore. Regardless of carbon pricing (and it’s a pretty safe bet that India won’t be going down that route in the near future), peak oil will make sure of that.
Did people see that the CEO of General Motors acknowledged peak oil overnight, saying the era of the petrol car will soon be over? Posted on it over at Greensblog this morning.
“…. It’s certainly easy to see how such measures could be seen as hypocritical though.”
You are spot on there Desipis. I quote below a few words from a report about our last years car sales figures.
” The latest figures show that for the first time last year, the industry sold more than 1 million new cars, trucks and buses. Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries chief executive Andrew McKellar says some of the biggest increases were in larger vehicles. “There has been some shift towards light cars and small cars overall but that said, four-wheel drives, sports utility vehicles, they’re still selling very strongly,” he said. ”
[link]
“I fear there may be a lot of very angry Indians who have bought their 1 lakh car and find that, within a very few years, they simply cannot afford to buy the petrol to run them anymore.”
tim, it is more likely to be angry Aussies who just do not seem to have got it.
We continue to drive around in armoured tanks and have the cheek to be enraged about a 2 cylinder nano that sounds like it has a tricky little german designed engine and runs on the smell of an oily rag.
Good to see you back, Tim…and looking forward to a few more friendly stoushes.
On topic, I’m not sure he was referring to peak oil as conventionally understood, rather that demand would grow faster than supply. Doesn’t really matter much, all it means is that the price of oil will keep going up until somebody’s priced out of the market, and those environmental nightmares oil shale, tar sands, and coal-to-oil become seriously attractive…
Ambigulous: you don’t expect much, do you?
Seriously, all of the information you’re after can be found, if you’re prepared to spend enough time trying - I know I’ve tracked down selected bits from it on occasion. But there’s no convenient repository of it all.
Oh, sure, Joe2, I have no doubt about the angry Aussies, as well. That’s already coming, as is the (far too slow) turnaround in car sales figures, with smaller cars finally overtaking monster tonka trucks again.
However, somehow I don’t think it’s the same Aussies who drive the monster tonsters who are concerned about the arrival of the Tata Nano…
Robert Merkel wrote:
I think perhaps New Zealand might be a good example of why the bombs simply disappear. New Zealands roads once used to be littered (literally) with smoky, buggered old vehicles as their protectionist policies prevented affordable vehicles being developed there. Once they opened their market to cheap used cars from Japan, they decimated the market for the smokers. Overall, I think if the car is cheap enough and economical enough, the running costs of a Nano will be so low as to make even an older motorcycle simply not comparable. Hence, they should quickly disappear (assuming Tata can keep up with demand).
Ambigulous, I’d love to see some thorough analysis of the kind you’re looking for, too. But have not seen anything of the sort. If youfind it, do post it!
On your question of ‘actual greenhouse efects’, yes, this is part of the generally accepted equation. Most people use CO2e, or the equivalent climate forcing of CO2. Numbers for some gases are a bit hazy, still, but methane is around 21 times the climate impact of CO2. And, yes, also, India’s total greenhouse inventory would most certainly include the methane emissions from its livestock.
Worth noting, though, that free grazing livestock with a varied diet produce less methane than factory-fed and nicely fattened moos.
Tim, the numbers I’ve seen suggest adding a hybrid drivetrain adds around $10,000 to the price of a car. That’s less than the difference in price between the luxury version of a Toyota Prado (for instance) and the standard version.
It’s not the middle class who can afford to drive their kids to school in a Toorak tractor that are going to really feel the pain, it’s the people who are already driving around in beaten-up Corollas.
OK Robert, so what happens after you and Kerr stop squabbling? I’m much more interested in what happens on the ground than another salvo in teh culture war.
I’m surprised that the Nano wasn’t built on LPG technology.
What seems likely is that the numbers of the smoke bombs will decrease, both in actual terms and as a proportion of vehicles in use. Expect a lot of rusting Lee-Enfield motorbikes and Humber Ambassadors to be scattered throughout the third world: something else for Robert Merkel to purse his lips at.
From what I understand, India’s infrastructure can’t cope with current levels of road traffic. I’d expect those millions of Nanos to spend much of their lives idling in traffic jams.
The difference between New Zealand and India is that New Zealand doesn’t have untold millions of people for whom an old Hindustan Ambassador or Lee-Enfield motorcycle represent a quantum leap in their lifestyle.
Yes. I also saw that said CEO was boosting electric cars and ethanol. If the former are to be driven by electricity sourced from fossil fuels, they are more likely than not to be a net environmental bad, as burning coal or gas in a power station to produce X joules of electricity to run the car is less efficient (i.e. it emits more carbon) than burning the fuel in the car itself to generate X joules of energy. Of course the phrase “all else being equal” is an important qualifier in this case.
Quoth Robert “and those environmental nightmares oil shale, tar sands, and coal-to-oil become seriously attractive…” This implies that relying on Peak Oil for a correction in the price of fuel towards carbon neutrality is insufficient These conversion technologies must have a correct carbon pricing via some mechanism e.g carbon taxes.
The concern about this car is that it has a dirty two stroke motor and will create dreadful pollution problems.Part of the plan to get China and India onside in the new Kyoto is an agreement to transfer technology so they can jump a generation There are small clean engines that would fit in the new Tata. I not sure al the altruism being spoken by Tata is anything more than window dressing. if it had real concerns it owukld be putting out a clean safe car for the masses. I spose philosophically you have to wonder about mo vinto more cars when we shld be thinking about mass transit. But if we can’t agree to do it why should the Indians.
Paul,
And if they are driven by ethanol they may be worse. From one calculation I have seen the food taken to fill up one HumVee once is about the same as can feed a person for a year. Of course, in the US, they may be powered by one of the nuclear stations that are in the pipeline.
What is worse?
David Rubie, have you been to new Zealand recently? Their cars are shit. Sure they come in a wonderful variety of shapes and names that we never see here, but often enough they’re ten year old crappy Japanese and Korean cars seriously in need of a full service. Maybe if they were a bit better off they’d have less polluting smoke bombs. The New Zealand car fleet remains older than the Australian one, which makes sense when a lot of ‘new’ kiwi cars are already 5 - 6 years old!
Thanks Robert @ 10 and tim @ 13.
I suppose my feeling is that in this debate there is still too much abuse (e.g. “dirty little smoke bombs”) and too few facts. Not all facts have to be quantitative, but it’s a damn good base to start from, if the perils we abhor are predicted by quantitative meteorolgical and biogeochemical modelling. Not to mention population forecasts, economic modelling of developing economies, etc.
Alan: it’s not a two-stroke engine, and Tata is promising that the Nano will meet Euro IV emissions standards - that is, better than most of the cars on the road now. It won’t meet contemporary Western safety standards, but, then again, it’s a lot safer than the aforementioned Hindustan Ambassadors and Lee-Enfields.
As far as carbon emissions from electric cars, it depends. One calculation I’ve seen compared the Toyota Prius and a Mitsubishi all-electric prototype; they came out roughly the same if you assume the electricity came from the New South Wales grid. The further point is that there are more ready replacement for coal-fired power stations than there are for fossil fuels in cars.
wilful wrote:
Compared to before the import restrictions were lifted, they are both (a) cheaper and (b) cleaner. Australian roads aren’t exactly filled to excess with bright, shiny, efficient vehicles either, but pretty much anything fuel injected and/or catalysed is better than the gross polluters currently clogging 2nd/3rd world roads. I just can’t see millions and millions of Indians taking up that Tata Nano - they simply can’t afford it even at $3,000AUD + running costs (which will increase, not decrease). It’s aimed at the up-and-comers. While there are (comparatively) lots of them, it’s not like suddenly 1 billion people will be taking to the highway. Those already running a car or considering the purchase of something crap like a wprn out, second hand Maruti 800 (an old Suzuki Alto) will have something new and clean to choose. Older, rubbish cars will just be abandoned as being too expensive to repair and/or become more valuable as scrap. It’s good.
I reckon the future of private transport, of the motorised variety, is likely to be of the ‘putt-putt’ variety for all, anyway. If something of Nano style car was available and i did not have to compete with B-doubles, then i would trade up right now.
Lectures to developing countries of the ‘you should’ variety are tedious when there seems no sign of drawback by those who are sucking up all the resources.
Robert, your last point there is crucial - “there are more ready replacement for coal-fired power stations than there are for fossil fuels in cars”.
And, Paul, I should have gone into more detail here, as I did at Greensblog. Of course, there’s huge problems with ethanol, and electric cars are only going to be useful as climate action if charged by renewables. But I was simply using Wagoner’s statement to highlight that peak oil concerns are slowly going mainstream…
Interestingly, there are now multiple car share companies operating in Melbourne’s inner city. I’m sure they’re strictly for leftie luvvie wankers, you have to prove that on your application form, but that’s an excellent way to save money and the environment, albeit with a bit more inconvenience. Maybe not the entire future of individual transport, but definitely going to increase.
Lee-Enfield motorbikes and Humber Ambassadors…
The Lee-Enfield (actuall Short Magazine Lee-Enfield or SMLE) was a rifle (Lee design and Enfield manufacture) used in .303 inch calibre as the standard British infantry firearm from 1908 until replaced in the late 1950s. It replaced the Lee-Metford rifle (which it closely resembles) used in the South African conflict. The Indian-made motorcycle in question is the Royal Enfield Bullet 500, first made in 1953 by the Enfield Cycle Co. of Coventry, UK and made in India essentially unchanged since 1955.
The Hindustan Ambassador was originally based on the 1948 Morris Oxford, but has undergone a such a range of cosmetic and mechanical changes over the 60 years of its manufacture that it can no longer be said to be the same car.
Hal9000 @ 28
You beat me to it. Royal Enfield motorbikes have been available in Australia for some time. Cheap, slow but full of character they say.
They are not to be confused with the Lee Enfield rifle I had as a young fella.
Put the two side by side and the difference is easy enough to spot…
The car is small enough to have a solar electric/petrol drive . There is enough roof space for about a 2KW panel which would be ideal for the conditions you see on TV with all sorts of stopped or slow moving vehicles in Indian cities. Once the traffic builds up speed what you accumulated whist stationary can be used at a greater than 2KW rate and with regenerative braking.
I have read that the transmission is by a rubber band which I presume means that there are two cones connected by the rubberband and gear change is effected by forcing the band to find different diameters on each cone.It should not be too hard to add an electric motor to that arrangment.
This could only be done of course when the Chinese have made the cost of panels dirt cheap.
Resindog: full of character no question, slow certainly, cheap, no. For $7,500 you could get yourself a perfectly good brand-new Japanese or Korean 250 that would outpower the Royal Enfield while using less fuel. You’re right though—I’d pick the thumper every time.
Anyway if what you’re after in a motorcycle are pre-1940s Imperial virtues, that is to say, character not intellect, you can’t go past a Ural. Go East, young man.
Be interesting to compare the Tata Nano to the Reva electric which is about 3.5 times the purchase price, but one would assume cheaper to run. Of course it depends on the electricy costs and the carbon footprint of Indian power generation plants.
Can one add in the population health benefits of “moving” the pollution from city streets to power plant smoke stacks?
I’m not sure which would be “better” overall or even how you define better in this kind of comparison.
Liam, resin dog, a close friend of mine bought his brand new Enfield from the dealer in New Delhi and rode around India on it, then shipped it back to Aus. The number of things that have gone wrong with it is beyond belief. The metal is atrociously poor, soft and rusty, while the tolerances on every part are so sloppy. It cannot stop leaking oil.
It has been suggested that they haven’t changed the tools in the factory since 1955.
My Honda was significantly faster in first than his enfield (when it ran) was in top.
Amazingly, Enfield also does a diesel bike - often modified to be more directly farm machinery.
Quog: if India’s power plants are anything like China’s, there’s no pollution controls on them, and half the time they’re in the middle of cities…
wilful @ 27 - car pooling
It can work in the country too [provincial town in Victoria]. I drive approx 125 km each week day, to and from work. Two of those days I’m in a car pool of 4 people, the other three days in a car pool of three people. So I drive on 1.5 days a week, averaged out, instead of 5. Saves me cash, wear-and-tear, time concentrating on driving; and the gossip is entertaining.
I’m not claiming to be a carbon angel: self-interest ($ savings) is a powerful prod.
But that’s just the driving I’m obliged to do, 48 weeks a year. Weekends and recreation, no car pooling yet.
cheerio
I didn’t believe you about the diesel bike, wilful, until I looked it up.
Fully sick, and by ’sick’ I mean ‘truly demented’.
And for your daily trip into WTFistan, here’s the best of British lunacy: a homebrew diesel GSX.
The caravan has probably moved on from this post, but I’ll make a couple of comments.
At about 50 miles per gallon or a bit better the Tata Nano isn’t all that impressive in terms of economy. The diesel hybrids seem to promise more, for example the Ford Reflex.
Along the way in reading around there was an estimate of 270 million cars in India and China at some future point, 2020 I think. I don’t think the world can contemplate this prospect with equanimity.
Currently road transport accounts for about 10% of world emissions. The received wisdom seems to be that the world should reduce it’s emissions by about 50% by 2050. With the expected increase in population that gets us down to about 2 tonnes of CO2e per capita (I think it should be a good deal less). According to this list 117 countries are already there or above with CO2 alone. China is at 3.84.
There is a still useful chapter on transportation in Monbiot’s book Heat. He quotes a study he got from Lynn Sloman which found that 40% of journeys made by car could be made by public transport, by bicycle or by walking. With improvements to public transport and cycling facilities another 40% could be saved.
Public transport needs to be redesigned to make it a preferable experience to car travel.
He doesn’t do complete life-cycle metrics on CO2 but on a standard journey from London to Manchester the CO2 per passenger was 36.6 kg for cars, 5.2 for trains and 4.3 for buses. Each coach, he says, hoovers up about a mile of cars on the road. The carrying capacity of a road could be increased by about 15 times if we did away with cars.
Thanks Brian @ 37 and Quog @ 32.
Latrobe Valley brown coal power plants would be good for Melbourne if Melb took up electric vehicles: plumes dispersed over farmland, forests, small towns, and out over Bass Strait (particulates partly captureded by electrostatic precipitators). Prevailing south-westerly breezes carrying plumes away from Melb most days. So certainly these pollutants are not hovering over a major city.
Smog in Melb due mainly to temperature inversions, basin effect with Dandenongs to the east, road traffic burning hydrocarbons, sunny days for photochemical effects???
But Hazelwood power station AND the others are big CO2 emitters. Eucalypt plantations by power companies are offsets, some planted in early 90’s. Worst factor seems to be the high water content of brown coal, so coal needs drying which uses energy, which is provided by - guess what? - burning brown coal. I saw an estimate last week that 60% of Victoria’s energy production is used to dry brown coal. Golly!!
Thanks for the correction, Hal & resindog.
I don’t think we have mentioned plug-in electric hybrid cars (PHEVs) yet. The idea, as exemplified in the GMH Chevrolet Volt is to use an electric battery chargeable from the grid for the first 64 km, which covers most city driving.
I haven’t had time to research the topic thoroughly, but I believe there is considerable interest in PHEV diesels in Europe.
The takeout of my comment at 37 was to be that if we are looking at drastic cuts in emissions in the developed countries of 80-90%, or even 50%, we must reduce the proportion of toltal emissins devoted to road transport. Some sectors, such as methane from animats, air travel, cement-making and socalled ‘fugitive emissions’ are going to be difficult to reduce. So our aim should be to decarbinise almost conmpletely road transport, especially for private transport, and to minimise it’s use so that we are not using masses of concrete to build highways, flyovers etc.
It seems to me that decarbonising the electricity grid is a priority to run public transport and to provide a power source for private vehicles.
Also I doubt whether price signals on carbon are going to get us where nwe need to be. We are going to have to subsidise the upgrading and perhaps operation of public transport and the infrastructure for bicycles.