Ramesh’s blog This is Me!!

TATA NANO

The unveiling of the TATA NANO at the Auto show in New Delhi recently showed the company's commitment to make POSSIBLE what many sceptics thought MISSION IMPOSSIBLE.

A lot of people have praised the company and the leadership. In UK Tata's small car has become the talk of London. It is getting big publicity, being called " a miracle on wheels, a car a generation ahead of its' predecessors and a revolution in the small car market."  Meanwhile other car manufacturers such as Honda are not hopeful that the car will be a success owing to the lack of infrastructure and high petrol prices would keep the average Indian on two wheeler for a long time to come.

I can still remember the thrill of having bought my first car. It was an old second hand Premier Padmini and I use to take care of it so well. Since then, over time I have managed to change and upgrade to newer and bigger cars. But the thrill of buying a car for the very first time is unmatched. There are several others in India to whom owning a car is still a dream and TATA's have just targeted that lot and worked hard to give them a reason to hold on to their IMPOSSIBLE DREAM. No wonder then that the TATA NANO is being hailed as the Model T of the 21^st century.

I am not sure exactly how many will buy the Nano. But certainly with a price tag of Rs 1,30,000 (inclusive of tax) a lot of people who don't own a car today  would buy a Nano. The same is true of the high end two wheeler owners who would rather pay an extra 60 or 70,000 rupees and have themselves upgraded to a four-wheeler rather than settle for a two wheeler.

With the five cheapest cars in the world coming either from China or India (both of whose economies are showing at least 8% growth rate), the ramifications are that a large number of cars would be sold out in the days ahead. Environmentalists, however, fear that already clogged roads and polluted cities will soon be overwhelmed by millions of learner drivers. There is no denying that in an age when the world is conscious and aware of the effects Green House Gases have on Global Warming ' a few million cars more on the roads mean a more trouble on our hands. But if India as a nation couldn't care less hitherto to stop and check the polluting vehicles on the road, I feel this time  - when a million hearts of a young nation have rejuvenated hopes , aspirations and dreams - is definitely not the time to be bothered about it.

Nano means different things to different people. To the scientific community Nano- is a prefix (symbol n) in the SI system of units denoting a factor of 10⁻⁹. To a Bengali, I am told, it means Invisible and to a Gujarati it means small or younger one.

I am sure if one were to ask an average Indian today ' across language and geographic state borders -  what comes to his mind when he hears the word NANO, chances are he would say it's the name of his new dream. How much more satisfying can that get Mr Ratan Tata, I wonder, to be the man behind tens of millions of dreams? Quite an enviable position I must admit and what a lovely way to bring about National Integration in your own way. To you Mr Ratan Tata and the fantastic team you lead the least I can say is HATS OFF sir !!!

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Say TATA to Greenhouse Gases

An article that I came across recently made me proud of what the TATAs (along with ISRO) are doing in their own way to help combat Green house gas emissions. They are hoping to launch a Fuel Cell car propelled purely by Hydrogen.

Hydrogen has the following benefits:

·        It is the most abundant element on earth and it is a versatile energy carrier that can be produced from any source of energy

·        It would reduce oil dependency, and bring transport-related air pollution and greenhouse-gas emissions to virtually none

·        It can be stored and easily kept over time

While the potential advantage of hydrogen is that it could be produced and consumed continuously, using solar, water, wind and nuclear power for electrolysis, todays available technology has not matured to a stage where by the required Hydrogen can be produced with minimal pollution. Infact  hydrogen vehicles utilizing hydrogen produced using hydrocarbons, produce more pollution than vehicles consuming gasoline, diesel, or methane in a modern internal combustion engine, and far more than plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.

That apart todays fuel cell vehicles face three major challenges:

·        Fuel Cells are expensive to produce

·        Most fuel cell designs are fragile and can’t survive freezing conditions. And even if they could a lot of the power generated would be lost due to cold conditions. (This may not be applicable to most of India)

·        Lastly and perhaps most importantly is the problem of producing Hydrogen efficiently. With the best of technologies of today, hydrogen production today is costly, inefficient or POLLUTING.  

·        Coupled with this is the problem posed by the lack of an established distribution network.

From a Global warming point of view, POLLUTING does not sound too encouraging. One possible way to get around this problem is to break away from the traditional mindset that requires of us to have a established distribution system. Unlike Petroleum products that need to be distilled and taken in large tankers, Hydrogen need not be distributed in the same way. It could BUT it does not have to be.

In fact in a company in Michigan that is using photovoltaic cells on the roof of the fueling station to generate electricity, electrolyze water and create hydrogen, which they use to fuel up their hydrogen car. With this method, hydrogen is created cleanly and greenly and no hydrogen has to be produced in centralized locations and hauled by truck or pipeline. It’s onsite, on-demand, all the time. This same setup can be used by large companies to supply hydrogen to their employees’ cars as well.

There is yet another development I read about on the internet. It is believed that a company called Hydrogen Power Incorporated has created a prototype vehicle that uses water, aluminum and an environmentally friendly catalyst to create hydrogen-on-demand inside the vehicle. If this invention takes root and takes hold this will be the ultimate water car and no hydrogen infrastructure whatsoever would need to be built to support this vehicle. All that will be required will be filling the car with water and changing out the aluminum compound in the canister every so often

Well certainly a lot of developments are taking place concurrently the world over. And as far as India is concerned, one thing is for certain - with the best car manufacturer in the country and a space agency that has come of age with indigenous solutions (overcoming sanctions et al) things, if any, can only go RIGHT.  As a layman I am all excited about getting to drive my own rocket errr car. I wonder thought if we have the roads for it !

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