Letters - March 31, 2012

Science restricted

Two technologies that shape our future

A tremor ran through the cutting- edge electric car industry last month. Mathieu Tenenbaum, working with French automaker Renault, was just another faceless name till then. But one espionage story that hit the newsstands made him infamous in a single stroke.

City bus In demand, out of supply

After years of building roads and flyovers, Delhi government has decided to change tack to address congestion on its roads invest in new, sleek buses to restricted private vehicles. Other cities have followed suit. But their dream bus is either not on the market or just too expensive. Orders placed several months ago are overdue. The two major bus makers, Tata and Ashok Leyland, can barely deliver 100 a month till they ramp up production.

Olympics 2008, Beijing - raising the bar

With the Olympic Games breathing down Beijing's neck, the city is racing against the clock to ensure it meets one of the commitments it made when it won the bid for the games in 2001 blue skies. As one alights on the Jingshun highway that connects the airport to Beijing, a question comes inevitably to mind will Nini, the flying swallow chosen as one of the five mascots for the 2008 games, prosper in a city gridlocked by incessant waves of traffic--and the smoke it spews?

Small car revolution Who cares about congestion, pollution

Small cars have had it good for quite a while, but the market could undergo a drastic transformation with the advent of ultra-cheap, small cars led by the Tatas' Rs 1 lakh model.

Fuel inefficient India heading towards energy crisis

After the price hike last year, many Delhi-ites reportedly switched to buses and the metro--the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation flaunted a 12 per cent increase in trips. As Jaibir Kakar, a retail fuel pump owner in Hemkunt Colony put it, "Our sales do show a difference when the prices rise. The last time prices escalated, our average sales dipped by about 10 per cent.

Dirty fuel

When Faridabad resident Rajendra Dhankar's eight-month-old Santro began to belch white smoke like a run-down truck, he rushed to the vehicle's manufacturer, Hyundai. What had caused the engine to so wheeze was heavily adulterated fuel. The company replaced the piston and the ring. Dhankar's car was as good as new again. But even as he swore to henceforth buy petrol only from Delhi (Faridabad is a satellite town of Delhi), Hyundai hit the panic button.

How green is budget?

THE Union budget has announced its usual palliative for inclusive growth and aam aadmi. But the urban aam aadmi loses all.

Tesla’s lithium leap

“This car is electric, literally,” shrieked Jeremy Clarkson while testing the roadster Tesla for his popular British television show Top Gear. A battery-powered two-seater, it can achieve 100 km per hour from standstill in less than four seconds, out accelerating most sports cars. The performance is due to 6,831 lithium-ion cells, which silently generate power under the hood. The battery pack can store 56 KW per hour and delivers 215 KW of electric power, equivalent to 288 horsepower.

New auto emission norms delayed

Pressure from the automobile industry is delaying implementation of tighter vehicular emission norms in cities across India. Though four-wheelers in 11 cities, including the four metros, switched from Bharat Stage (BS) III emission norms to BS IV on April 1, other cities supposed to make the switch from BS II to BS III norms have to wait. A draft notification of the government has proposed October 1 as the new date for implementing BS III norms.