Top Gear’s toilet humour

A special edition of BBC automobile show Top Gear, which led to a complaint by the Indian High Commission, was not insulting, the programme has said.

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.

Car Control

Cities all over the world are checking car population to free their road space. Anumita Roychowdhury finds out where India is headed

On two legs and a prayer

The horn, though, would not have helped negotiate a bull that he skirted, but that meant his leg slipped into sludge heaped beside an open manhole. Before long, a bicyclist expectorated betel juice right on to his trouser legs and shoes.

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.

No public transport?

On April 21, a small stretch of road in a congested corner of south Delhi, one of the most polluted cities in the world, turned into an epicentre of chaos, confusion and downright indignation.

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.

Private vehicles eating into scare public land

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.