

Automakers Clash With India Over 'Aggressive' Emission Limits (energyconnects.com) 26
India's automakers are opposing the government's proposal to cut car emissions by 33% from 2027, calling the target "too aggressive" in a formal submission to the power ministry.
The Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers warned the plan risks billions of rupees in penalties and threatens future investments in the $137-billion auto sector. The proposal represents more than twice the pace of India's previous emission reduction target and forms part of the third phase of Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency norms first introduced in 2017. The industry body wants a more gradual 15% reduction target and opposes different standards for small versus heavy vehicles.
The Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers warned the plan risks billions of rupees in penalties and threatens future investments in the $137-billion auto sector. The proposal represents more than twice the pace of India's previous emission reduction target and forms part of the third phase of Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency norms first introduced in 2017. The industry body wants a more gradual 15% reduction target and opposes different standards for small versus heavy vehicles.
They are right (Score:2, Interesting)
They are right. It totally ruined all the fun options in the US. Somehow a 7 liter diesel dually truck is fine to daily drive, but a 50mpg 2.0 turbodiesel in a small passenger car is so restricted as to ban the category entirely.
Emissions rules pretend efficency doesn't matter by not caring if a vehicle makes the air 1% dirtier to avoid burning 20% more fuel vs a vehicle that is 1% cleaner but burns 20% more fuel.
To them if a vehicle could theoretically burn 200% more fuel to make the air 10% cleaner, it wo
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It is possible to make sensible efficiency and emissions laws without repeating the stupidity of what the USA did.
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I imagine they're referring to Europe given their focus on small turbo diesels. As far as I know those were never terribly popular in the US while they were definitely a thing in Europe.
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7 liter diesel trucks in Europe?
Sure, freight trucks maybe. As a 'daily drive'? Hell no. You can get into fewer and fewer cities / environmental zones with diesels.
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It is possible to make sensible efficiency and emissions laws without repeating the stupidity of what the USA did.
I'd agree it is possible, but really difficult because people will find loopholes if they find emissions rules to be problematic.
I'm forgetting details so don't anyone nitpick if I don't get it all correct. There were rules on emissions for a "light truck" to lower emissions for people that drove vans and pickups for personal and recreational use but not penalize people that needed a "heavy truck" for commercial use. The basis on the distinction would be things like the weight of the vehicle and the inter
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They are right. It totally ruined all the fun options in the US. Somehow a 7 liter diesel dually truck is fine to daily drive, but a 50mpg 2.0 turbodiesel in a small passenger car is so restricted as to ban the category entirely.
The use of different fuel efficiency mandates for different vehicle classes is a real problem. If one-ton vehicles have a more stringent fuel economy mandate than 1.5-ton vehicles, this drives the market to make their vehicles heavier, which is exactly OPPOSITE to what you want. We've seen this in US regulations.
Likewise, if trucks have more lenient regulations than cars, this drives manufacturers to very carefully look at what the definition of a truck is, and make sure their vehicles are classed as truck
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What little interest this country had with diesel passenger cars died with the VW scandal. Diesel is more expensive than gas so even with better mileage it's mostly a wash. That and there aren't many shops who will work on small diesels.
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Reality check time: until diesel cars finally got through Detroit, diesel was ALWAYS at least $0.10 LESS than regular. Car makers, wholly-owned by the oil companies, preferred gas, which cost more.
Re: They are right (Score:2)
"Somehow a 7 liter diesel dually truck is fine to daily drive, but a 50mpg 2.0 turbodiesel in a small passenger car is so restricted as to ban the category entirely."
The one and only fun 50 MPG diesel car ever sold in the US was the original Golf TDI with what, a 1.9? Then the Germans all willfully cheated the emissions tests for diesels and they all had to cancel those models, because no one was buying them, and they no longer got that mileage either. Germany, Germany's automakers, and Bosch did that. Blam
Air pollution from driving KILLS PEOPLE (Score:5, Insightful)
Indian urban air is spectacularly bad, so the idea of strong enforcement in this area is entirely appropriate. The inevitable whinging by those currently making money by selling murder devices is to be resisted. The polluter pays principle - which is merely the enforcement of the idea that you aren't free to damage me by your actions - should be the starting point. Sadly its implementation will be painful and it's always easier to look away.
https://www.newindianexpress.c... [newindianexpress.com]
It's a soluble part of the problem (Score:3)
So should be addressed. My local government wimped out of implementing a clean air zone because drivers whinged loudly - and here cars are THE major cause of air pollution deaths
https://www.rcp.ac.uk/news-and... [rcp.ac.uk]
https://www.manchestereveningn... [manchester...news.co.uk]
https://www.manchestereveningn... [manchester...news.co.uk]
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https://aqli.epic.uchicago.edu... [uchicago.edu]
Re: Air pollution from driving KILLS PEOPLE (Score:3)
Yep. They're a bit heavy handed with the enforcement but they really want to get the number of deaths down to a more reasonable amount. They're installing more solar and wind power each year than the rest of the planet combined. Not just for clean air, but also because they want to reduce oil and gas dependencies.
If you want to know why the Koch brothers don't like China, well, this is one reason.
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Its not the cars' fault if you have over a 1bn people centered in highly dense cities. See china.
Good point. *looks at China*. New Delhi has an AQI average of 126 today, 151 average daily peak a week ago. Chongqing (which is the most densely populated city in China) has an AQI average of 48 today with an average daily peak of 56 in the past 2 weeks.
Turns out the air quality is much better in China's dense residential areas than in India's. And guess what, only a decade ago the air quality in Chongqing was a full order of magnitude worse. What did China do? Oh right, massively clamp down on emissions du
Re: Air pollution from driving KILLS PEOPLE (Score:1)
All great but pollution in Delhi is not because of vehicles, it is because of wanton burning of stubbles in neighboring state which has direct hotline to Greta and Trudeau, so any laws curbing their behavior gets reported in the western media as an attack on farmers and/or minority .
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You would be right if it were the season for it. But it's not and Delhi's pollution is sustained.
By the way AQI is significantly higher in Bengaluru than in every dense Chinese city as well. 93 average daily peak in the past 2 weeks. What's your theory there? Smoke from the neighboring state on the other side of the massive country again despite prevailing winds from the south?
Pollution doesn't have a single problem. But to say vehicles aren't an issue is just honestly the dumbest fucking thing I've heard.
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Not just clamping down on emitting cars and bikes, and many of the bikes were already electric (lead acid battery) anyway.
They set a goal to dominate EV tech, and achieved it. They banned a lot of domestic and business pollution, particularly wood and coal burning near cities. Interestingly, wood burners are becoming popular in the UK again, as a "feature", and people are complaining about the pollution and massively impacted AQI.
China also invested heavily in public transport. They have more metro lines th
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Indian urban air is spectacularly bad, so the idea of strong enforcement in this area is entirely appropriate.
Just a quick note, the regulations discussed here are about carbon dioxide emissions (and also, not mentioned in the headline, about trying to reduce India's dependence on imported oil), not about particulate pollution, carbon monoxide, or nitrogen oxide emissions.
India is great for EVs (Score:5, Insightful)
India is fantastic for EVs - lots of sunshine... need for low/short range cars.
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Removing the subsidies on kerosene
500 million poor Indians just burned down your cities in protest. How are your carbon emissions now?
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EVs aren't solar powered, they need to plug in somewhere. Not only do they need to plug in somewhere but they also consume a shitload of electricity. That may be a problem in a country with a horribly bad transmission network, where 30 million people don't even have access to electricity, many regions suffer from rolling blackouts, and double digit percentage of households report *daily* power outages.
All the sun in the world doesn't help charge an EV when they can't even keep the lights on.
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I mean... you can use solar panels to generate the electricity the EVs use while plugged in. The big advantage is they can be installed near to where your car is charging, completely bypassing the transmission network. The other big point is that solar is intermittent, so you'll often need to pair it with batteries, and those help a lot with a bad mains grid.
Also, battery chargers in general (whether grid battery, home battery or EV chargers) represent a huge dispatchable load that can be scaled up or down