Tata Intends To Sell Air-Powered Car In India 398
Diggester writes "Tata Motors (an Indian car manufacturer) is changing things up with the first car to run on air, the Airpod. The Airpod's technology was originally created in France at Motor Development International but has since been bought by Tata in hopes of bringing it to the Indian consumer car market. With virtually zero emissions and at the cost of about a penny per kilometer, it is definitely one of the most environmentally and economically friendly vehicles in the world. The tank holds about 175 liters of compressed air that can be filled at special stations or by activating the on-board electric motor to suck air in from the outside. Costing about $10,000, this car could beat out most smart cars from the market." If flying cars aren't available, sucking cars seem like a nice stop-gap.
This story comes up every now and then.. (Score:5, Informative)
..so when are they going to do it, like, for real?
NEVER (Score:3, Interesting)
Nobody's going to buy that piece of crap. It's a glorified golf cart.
Even India's poor are already turning up their noses to the Tata Nano, preferring to buy established foreign models.
I think the Nano is a great benefit to the poor, especially the upcoming diesel model, because it's designed specifically for 3rd world conditions. It even has better ground clearance because of India's pot-holed roads. The only other thing it needs to come with, is a bumper-sticker calling for ruling thug-ocracy to be thrown
Re:NEVER (Score:5, Insightful)
India's poor are too busy sleeping on the street or grazing their goat at the side of the freeway to turn their noses up at anything.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
It's about time to throw out the old preconceptions about the rising powers of China and India. They simply aren't true any more.
Re:NEVER (Score:5, Informative)
Are you trying to tell me what I saw with my own eyes?
I went to India late last year, to multiple cities. I directly observed these things, street sleepers in vast numbers, families living in makeshift shelters at the side of the road, people grazing animals in the central reservations.
These may be cliches, they may even be preconceptions, but they are very true in modern India.
Re:NEVER (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe what GP means is that there is a market for this car. India's middle class alone is larger than most first world countries population.
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I think it is pretty relevant. It is not the poor, but the middle class that were turning their nose up at tata nano (the poor, I expect will continue with their two wheelers)
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:NEVER (Score:4, Insightful)
Well I hate to let reality get in the way of an angry rant but 68.7% of India lives on less than $2 / day and the middle class is 4% of the population.
Re: (Score:3)
As much as I want to agree with you on this, if you refuse to call it by its rightful name you are undermining your own ability to accept facts and perform reasoning based on those facts.
Re:NEVER (Score:5, Funny)
You're keeping the Bible Belt and calling it a "fix"?
Re:NEVER (Score:5, Funny)
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Hey, things are getting much better here in Georgia. We can actually buy beer/wine in select locations on a Sunday now. That's progress!
I guess progress has come even to areas outside Tbilisi, then?
Re:NEVER (Score:5, Insightful)
The not middle class half of India's population still makes for a lot of street sleepers.
Also with a per capita GDP of about 1,500 USD your definition of middle class is pretty low-end.
Re:NEVER (Score:5, Informative)
I wish people would stop perpetuating that myth. Middle class has nothing to do with USD anywhere that isn't in the US. Here in China you can lead what is basically an upper class lifestyle on less than $10k USD a year because the cost of living in much of China is that low. I don't get paid in USD and I don't buy things in USD so using that as some sort of measuring stick makes no sense.
What's more in the US they've deliberately used inflation to pick the pockets of anybody not rich enough to have a sizable portion of their savings in investments.
Re:NEVER (Score:5, Insightful)
The car (supposedly a "glorified golf cart") costs $10,000 (you can convert all the figures into rupees or euros or swiss francs if you want). If the average person makes $1500 / yr, they're probably not going to be able to afford that car, never mind a conventional one. In the west if you're in the "middle class" you usually make rather more than the price of a cheap car per year.
Re:NEVER (Score:4)
There's a lot of taxi cabs in the cities though, or at least there were 20 years ago when I visited. How do the cab drivers afford the more expensive regular cars if they can't afford the $10k ones?
Re:NEVER (Score:5, Insightful)
A good point. People often ask me how my salary in Iceland compares to my last salary in the US, and my answer is usually, in short, "it's irrelevant on its own". The long answer is "it's complicated", followed by a long discussion of the different tax rates, the different compensation structures, the different benefits (company, union, and national), the different cost of living in different regards, and on and on. It's very hard to quantify. It's much easier to just say, "I live reasonably well and enjoy life" or soforth.
Re:NEVER (Score:4, Interesting)
To me, inflation is defined by the buying power of my money. As far as I'm concerned, the dollar has lost 50% of its buying power since 1999, averaged across what I personally buy (groceries, gas, household items, furniture, some building materials). That "low" inflation is someone's joke.
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You can live an upper class life in the US on $10k, as long as you are willing to make a few sacrifices. It's all about your point of view.
I'd like to find the part of the US where $10,000/year would cover rent, utilities (heat/electricity/water), and food... much of the country, that's not even enough for rent.
Economies elsewhere in the world are different. You can make a reasonable comparison between Canada and the US, because they're very similar: most costs are about the same, and they've been trading between which country has the higher per capita income for a little while now... right now, Canada has a slightly higher per capita than the
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Half of India's population is now in the middle class.
It's about time to throw out the old preconceptions about the rising powers of China and India. They simply aren't true any more.
This is wishful thinking or tautological nonsense. India's average income is under $2k per person per year, and that's a dollar-averaged mean - the median earner makes far, far less. Maybe you're simply defining Indian middle class to be some arbitrary number like "between $500 and $5000 of annual income," but that's rather useless. Instead, let's compare this average income to the $10k cost of the car and see that the half of India's population you declare to be middle class won't be buying many of thes
Re:NEVER (Score:5, Insightful)
The flaw in your analysis is that you forget India Population is just well above a billion people, so even a relatively small percentage of the population is still a lot of people.
Re:NEVER (Score:5, Interesting)
And no, there isn't a huge market for Ferraris anywhere in the world. Ferrari doesn't need a huge market though, it is quite content with its very small market of very rich people.
Overestimation... (Score:5, Informative)
The situation varies from state to state - in my state Kerala you can conclude 70% is middle class and Kerala population is on a long term decline (like Japan), health and development indexes are comparable to European nations etc.
The situation is the opposite in rural Bihar and other big northern states.
But the 20% officially middle class is a huge number - little less than the population of United States. Still if marketers and consultants conclude they are going to buy plastic crap from China in huge numbers they will be disappointed.
Western corporations regularly make an entry to India. The first mistake they make - overprice their products and Indian competition kills them on a price point. The second mistake they make is in overestimating the consumption patterns and excess inventory gets piled up - example: original Reebok and NIke shoes end up sold on the footpath.
But I have a fascination for the management and MBAs running these organizations. They are so clueless the errors they make are laughably stupid. Compared to them George Bush was a genius.
Re:NEVER (Score:4, Informative)
Half of India's population is now in the middle class.
It's about time to throw out the old preconceptions about the rising powers of China and India. They simply aren't true any more.
That doesn't appear to be true. Indeed, the trend appears to be in the opposite direction.
India income inequality doubles in 20 years, says OECD [bbc.co.uk]
Re:NEVER (Score:4, Interesting)
Just because a population is in the tens of millions does not make for an appreciable proportion of the total when dealing with China and India.
Beijing (where I live), Shanghai and Shenzhen are rich and up to developed standards. What you would find in the heartland of Henan, Sichuan, Hunan, Hubei would be considered to be very poor. What you would find in the mountains of Tibet and Guizhou however would simply shock most westerners. I have not been to India, but it's HDI is far below China's.
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I don't disagree with your comment per se, but I think you missed the point of Nursie's comment.
sanman2 said "India's poor" are "turning their noses up" at the Nano.
However, 32.7% of Indians live in poverty [wikipedia.org]. Because of this, Nursie rightly pointed out that "India's poor" probably have bigger concerns than which car to buy.
If sanman2 had said "members of India's lower middle class are already turning their noses up at the Nano" there would be no argument here.
I have been to India several times in the last
Re:NEVER (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody's going to buy that piece of crap. It's a glorified golf cart.
And you'd be wrong. At 100+ miles to a charge, you could use it anywhere you could use a scooter.
A glorified golf cart would be all a lot of people would need. If it can go 45 mph, you can drive it on city streets.
If they could bump the speed up to 55 and extend the range a bit, it would be a lot more useful, but they'll sell at the functionality they have now.
Re:NEVER (Score:5, Interesting)
I would probably buy one, and I live in the US. It would depend on how much it costs to run the pump and get a full tank.
Back in 2000 I was driving a gas guzzling huge SUV. When gas was consistently cheap it was never a real consideration for me. That changed in a hurry with the gas prices. Bought several Priuses since then, and lately I have reorganized my life so that I have to travel dramatically less.
In the last two years I walk to the grocery store. I buy less food (only what I can carry), have lost considerably weight, and eat better.
My work commute is 5-8 minutes. No problems doing that in a little car like that, especially if it is zero emissions, good for the environment, and cheap to operate.
I tend to stick close to home, ride a bike for long distances, and generally have changed my spending habits and how I relax. This kind of car actually fits to my lifestyle, and I don't think I would be the only one. Betting there is a market in the US as well.
The disadvantages. (Score:5, Insightful)
Wikipedia already has a nice article about compressed air cars: [wikipedia.org]
-It is safe.
-Exhaust from car is zero. Electricity for compressor can be made efficient.
Disadvantage:
-compressed air is a low energy storage compared to other.
-Long storage times, you will need a compressor at home and load it for 4 hours or something like that.
-Needs heat to expand air. Might run very inefficient in cold climate. (on the plus: free airco!)
A hybrid compressed air car might be a very good option however. Notice that a traditional combustion engine is a good compressor. Maybe tata is even creating a hybrid, they licensed the tech (see wikipedia again).
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Disadvantage:
-compressed air is a low energy storage compared to other.
-Long storage times, you will need a compressor at home and load it for 4 hours or something like that.
-Needs heat to expand air. Might run very inefficient in cold climate. (on the plus: free airco!)
Low energy storage is real, and a real drawback. It's shared with EVs, though, which have long storage times. Air cars do not have a long storage time, the appeal of the tech as opposed to EVs is that they recharge very quickly. You have a tank at home and it fills up when you're not looking (whenever energy is available/cheap.) Windmill-based storage stations out and about can fill themselves (with a tank in their center) when the wind blows and provide rapid refills. MDI even proposed using the technology
Re:NEVER (Score:4)
They are only around ~3000 lbs, which hardly makes them heavy compared to other cars. Expensive? They are on the low end between $20 and $30k.
What kind of real world mileage do you get out of that, if you don't mind my asking?
I drive a 2011 Subaru Impreza... a car that's in no way designed for efficiency (it's designed to drive around corners really fast), and I don't make any effort to try to conserve fuel, and I get about 35-40mpg real world out of it (with a manual transmission). It cost $10,000 less than a similarly-equipped Prius. If, over the lifetime of the Prius, you have not saved $10,000 in gas, then I'm coming out ahead on the cost scale.
And the reason I'm putting this to you is this: you can buy a turbodiesel VW for less than the Impreza cost, and reasonably expect 70mpg out of it in real world driving conditions. And, around here at least, diesel is less expensive than gasoline.
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Nobody's going to buy that piece of crap. It's a glorified golf cart.
Well, you're right that it's not a car. But it also not a golf cart.
No, it's an autorickshaw [pbase.com], and (if this is not vaporware) they will buy it because there are already probably a hundred million of them in India, home of Tata Motors.
Recycled CNN content (Score:5, Informative)
All this is is a blogger recycling a CNN YouTube from 2010 to get some clicks (worked astoundingly well!). And according to Wikipedia, it's been vapor since 2000.
Re:Recycled CNN content (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Recycled CNN content (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Recycled CNN content (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Recycled CNN content (Score:5, Funny)
Don't you try to tell me anything prick. I remember it being from the 70's and now you're going to call me a liar?
Yes, we are. [wikipedia.org]
Also, LOL to posting as Anonymous Coward but identifying yourself as the original poster: ArhcAngel.
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I forgot how few comments got modded up way back when. Maybe Slashdot needs to cut back on the mod points they're giving out.
Re:This story comes up every now and then.. (Score:4, Informative)
They aren't, because the idea doesn't really work [iop.org], though pneumatic hybrids could have some future in other forms (according to this paper).
Re:This story comes up every now and then.. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This story comes up every now and then.. (Score:5, Funny)
Given that they're *flying* cars, if they're "hitting the streets", I suspect that they'll be taken off the market pretty quickly. ;)
Not the first air powered car! (Score:5, Informative)
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And air pressure storage is notoriously inefficient. How does it compare to fuel cells though?
Re:Not the first air powered car! (Score:4, Insightful)
And air pressure storage is notoriously inefficient. How does it compare to fuel cells though?
And how can it be non-polluting when some external compressor is required to compress all this air?
It seems that India is having troubles keeping the electricity flowing these days, so how do they propose to power the compressor plants?
Is this another exercise in externalizing any environmental impact, and then pronouncing your product "Green" with great fanfare?
Its a lot like electric cars in general, powered by something, just not something we sell. The pollution will be 3 states away. You don't need to worry about it.
There is no way to compress air in the quantity needed other than by using fissile and fossil fuels or wind and solar.
But we don't have enough of those to handle our houses and our factories as it is, especially in India.
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You've never eaten curry, have you?
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I know it was meant as a joke, but if you're really stuck somewhere in the middle of nowhere, your proposal is definitly more feasable than creating gasoline or electricity out of thin air... besides that: target market is India. labour is cheap there. How many rupees to pay a guy to stomp on a bellow 3 or 4 hours?
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Actually, the main limitations on most "automotive" style li-ions concerning charging time are not the batteries - it's predominantly how fast you can supply the power and how quickly you can cool the pack. Anyone who's seen the sort of crazy stuff cutting edge RC hobbyists are doing with rapid charging/discharging li-ion packs knows that these things can take some serious abuse!
Can't do that with "laptop" style li-ions, though.
Cooling the pack and cabling well, I don't think anyone seriously considers that
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Anyone who's seen the sort of crazy stuff cutting edge RC hobbyists are doing with rapid charging/discharging li-ion packs knows that these things can take some serious abuse!
That's for their hobby though - an actual EV/Hybrid battery is big enough that economics take over; you can't abuse the battery and just eat the shortened life.
Ironically, one of the best buffers could be used EV battery packs, bought on the cheap because of their reduced capacity, and strung together.
Interesting.
Assumptions:
EV battery, new 53kwh (Using the Roadster as a model): Cost isn't good at $36k, but I've said 'there's nothing wrong with EVs that a battery that lasts twice as long for half the price wouldn't fix'. So let's say that 'futuretech' and economy of scale has reduced the price to $9k.
Recycle value: 50%; Most car batteries are re
of course! (Score:5, Funny)
... everybody loves inflatable tatas!
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Bravo
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So if an attractive woman is driving one of their cars, do guys nudge each other and say things like "Look at the tatas in that Tata"?
I believe this company has the funniest name on the planet Earth.
Re:of course! (Score:4)
Might they also say, "I hope she's an escort!"
And they're going to compress the air with?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And they're going to compress the air with?? (Score:4, Insightful)
If this thing is a penny a kilometer, that would be 50 cents.
What's worse: Burning a gallon of gasoline -- which also has to be electrically pumped -- or just the electricity to pump. 50 cents worth of electricity, if that. (Some of that money would be filling station overhead, and not just electricity.)
Or maybe we should just give up progress until someone comes up with free unlimited energy?
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You mean like sunlight?
We literally have more solar input than we know what to do with.
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Not directly, but you can farm algae in pools of water and use that to make biodiesel.
Energy is still energy even if you lose parts of it converting from one form to another.
Re:And they're going to compress the air with?? (Score:4, Informative)
Uh, 50 km is an extremely poor rough conversion of 20 miles. It's only 1.6 km to the mile remember, whereas you've multiplied by 2.5.
20 miles is ~32 km. Making your journey roughly 32 cents in this car, not 50 cents.
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Even "dirty" electricity can be a win ... (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is that electricity (or petrol) has to be used to compress the air. And 65% of the electricity in India is generated by burning coal or natural gas.
To be fair you need to consider the energy used to refine and deliver the gasoline/diesel, and any emissions in the process.
One nice thing about electricity is that even when "dirty" sources are used for generation the emissions are centralized so that there is more opportunity for capture and sequestration.
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The problem is not electricity or petrol. The problem is something capable of rotating an air compressor with sufficient torque. A windmill could do it... A steam engine could do it... a man in a treadmill could do it...
Spec your problems more carefully in future.
Water power (Score:2)
If you have a large enough supply of moving water, you could build turbines and tie them directly to the compressors. Or i guess even wind turbines, or a bunch of people on a treadmill :)
Even if you used electricity, you can generate that cleanly and not require coal or NG. Sure, clean is not as efficient, but just saying that they are not your ONLY option.
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With gas at 3.50 per gallon and 20 MPG (about 32 KM/G) you end up with a cost of about 10 cents per kilometer. If you can make a reliable car that will go a kilometer on a penny that is a significant savings. Especially if the car itself is cheap like most Indian cars.
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And they're going to compress the air with??
Why... pedaling of course. It makes a good business case for using the lower class to power the cars of the middle class (the upper class will continue to use oil powered cars) .
And also a boon for fast-food joints: cheap and rich "fuel" for the "pedallers" - I tell ye, US should try it instead of marching on the "trickle economy". Just imagine to get paid for actually exercising at the gym.
Nothing about the range (Score:5, Insightful)
It's an interesting idea, but they don't say anything about what that 175 liters gets you in terms of distance or power. The onboard pump is interesting (and necessary IMHO) but India's power infrastructure may not be up for the task of hundreds of thousands of cars all pumping away... if they're targeting cities, or they can get these filling stations everywhere, it might be alright.
The real problem with all these compressed air vehicles is the diabatic nature of compressing air. When you compress it, you generate a huge amount of heat that's hard to use and slows down the filling process (since the pressures are higher than normal, which will be problematic for the service station idea), but when you expand it (for power) you need to re-heat the air or else your efficiency goes way down since super-cold air doesn't have much volume. That's why they immerse SCUBA tanks in water while filling. If they figured out how to minimize that problem (maybe they use it slowly enough that it's not an issue?), they should sell a lot of them. TFA doesn't have anything suggesting that they have, though... so I'm skeptical.
Re:Nothing about the range (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Nothing about the range (Score:5, Informative)
Because the heat is created by the fueling (compression) process, and reabsorbed from the environment during the use (expansion) process, the exact opposite of when you'd want to recover the heat.
On the up side, you get free pollutionless air conditioning every time you hit the 'gas' pedal.
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Very strange (Score:3, Informative)
Your search - airpod site:tata.com - did not match any documents.
$10,000 (Score:3, Informative)
Hindi for "far more money than 95% of the population will see in their lifetime".
Running on fumes! (Score:4, Funny)
Neat, a car that can run on fumes--indefinitely!
Not zero emissions, not even close (Score:3)
These are not zero emissions, not even close. They burn petroleum, coal, use nuclear or something else to compress the air. The air is merely a storage medium for the energy. This is all a marketing lie.
It's Tata (Score:2)
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Use compressed hydrogen?
A couple of interesting points (Score:4, Informative)
Some details on the specifications, range etc of the Airpod can be found here [www.mdi.lu], but some of the stats are in French.
Also, Tata originally signed the agreement [tatamotors.com] in 2007. Five year old news?
Lastly, from the MDI website about the Airpod [www.mdi.lu]: This latest version of AirPod... [has] a base consisting of a composite sandwich of fiberglass and polyurethane... [and a] a cast aluminium frame. More details from that link.
Obligatory Simpsons Quote (Score:5, Funny)
Appropriately, from the episode "Screaming Yellow Honkers".
There's this car, and it runs on WATER, man! (Score:2)
The government doesn't want you to know about it. It runs on WATER, man!
Zero emissions (Score:2)
Ya, by the CAR, but what about where you are getting the air?
I suppose it would work in a small town commute, but i think id rather have a battery powered car instead.
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Manufacturer site (Score:2)
What makes me most skeptical is that there is no mention of this vehicle on the Tata [tatamotors.com] web site. If they are making it one would expect it to be on their web site.
This car is sort of a deathtrap (Score:5, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airpod [wikipedia.org]
Let's assume that Wikipedia is accurate here...
220kg of Poly-urethane and fiberglass - even with the range they claim (which is good) this vehicle will never be viable outside of 3rd world markets. It's never going to pass a safety test because it's a deathtrap. Still it may find a niche market and I am a fan of non-petroleum concepts.
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So, it's A/C is naturally built into the design.
Sued by Apple (Score:5, Funny)
They are so getting sued by Apple...
They can't call it air* or *pod. Oh no.
"One Billyon Dollars"
Re:Sued by Apple (Score:4, Funny)
That's nothing. The real problem they have is with the round corners on the bumpers.
NOT Pollution Free (Score:2)
The power to run those air compressors has to come from some place.
Not these clowns again... (Score:2)
Aircars are Last Place as Primary Movers (Score:5, Interesting)
Emissions free? Not hardly... (Score:3)
With virtually zero emissions...
Bull. Compressing air requires power and lots of it. The emissions might not be coming from the car itself but there will be plenty of emissions. Plus this still has the infrastructure network problem. Even if the drive technology is feasible (and I have my doubts on that) you still need a sufficiently large network of pumping stations to make using the vehicles feasible. It can be done but I doubt it will be.
the mileage numbers are a lie (Score:3)
Technically... (Score:3)
All cars with perhaps the exception of an all electric car run on "air".
Try running a car without air and see what happens. "But no, a car uses Petrol for fuel!" Actually a car uses more air for fuel than Petrol. A car uses combustion (for the most part) to generate kenetic energy, and your ain't going to get a whole lot of combustion without air.
Yes I am just being pedantic, and if I bothered to read the article I realize they are probably talking about compressed air or something.
Make it steam and huge flywheels to satisfy my steampunk craving and you have a deal!
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From 0 to 100 in 10 seconds (free-fall only)
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Don't be silly, a car in free fall would only require about 4.6 seconds to reach 100 miles per hour. !00 miles per hour is about 147 feet per second. As acceleration due to gravity at the earth's surface is 32 feet per second squared, it would only require 147/32=4.6 seconds. Of course, this ignores air resistance.
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How much of India has freezing temperaturs? Delhi is in the northern part of India, and its lowest recorded temperature ever was -0.6 C/30.9 F
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delhi#Climate [wikipedia.org]
Calcutta and Mumbai are warmer:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcutta#Climate [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mumbai#Climate [wikipedia.org]
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Why do people assume that any car that requires power to run must also cause emissions? We already have many counterexamples: fission, hydro, solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, biomass...
(granted, India may be unlikely to adopt those power sources anytime soon, but that's hardly the car's fault)