[Greenbuilding] [BULK] Re: Tata reveals the world's cheapest car

[Reuben Deumling]

It is probably good to be scrupulous about our language when we say 'clean'
in relation to a car. Until a few years ago this term would have referred to
criteria pollutants emitted out of the tail pipe: CO, HC, NOx, PM, and such
like, emissions that fouled the air. Now that global warming is edging out
local air quality in terms of column inches in our daily papers, it is CO2
we are more concerned about. All of these still come out of our tail pipes,
and will come out of this interesting new car's as well. Historically US
regulators have managed to reduce the criteria pollutants by a very large
margin (see *http://tinyurl.com/3bndsl* ). On CO2 emissions, though--which
is much more closely linked with fuel economy--our national track record is
notably less stellar. Since you can't add a filter to scrub CO2 out of the
air coming out of the tail pipe we've done very little about this pollutant
in this country. Although CAFE (corporate average fuel economy) regulations
are much touted as a means of dealing with this problem, because we continue
to drive more miles every year than the year before and now preferentially
buy cars labeled as light trucks, the gallons of fuel burned per capita in
US passenger cars is higher than it ever was. In my view, the new CAFE
updates aren't likely to change that very much either. See
http://www.epa.gov/oms/fetrends.htm for an excellent report on historic fuel
economy of US vehicles.

On whether India *should* produce such a car as the TATA NANO on a large
scale, my sense is that until we in the US demonstrate a low carbon
lifestyle we have no moral standing to criticize others for emulating our
long-standing material and energy profligacy (see
http://www.myfootprint.org/ for more on that--and if this link doesn't work,
you can try this one:
http://sustainability.publicradio.org/consumerconsequences/ ).

Finally, Lawrence is correct to point out the differences between
two-cylinder and two-stroke, although there are folks who claim to have
overcome the two-stroke designs' historically crappy emissions performance.
This does not mean you can go out and buy such a car, however.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-stroke_cycle

Reuben Deumling