And I thought Americans were carbrained, holy shit.
(To be fair, he’s not wrong in that this is intended to keep the auto companies and the government nice and fat – but the obvious response to this is to agitate for better public transit, not railing against an environmentally sound policy.)
I’d be mad if the government forced me to get rid of my working car too. I think a better option would be to do something like not allow new gas cars to be manufactured or registered to people. Like stop issuing license plates for gas cars rather than forcing everyone to get rid of them.
Sounds like how the EU is usually doing this. Limit the companies, not the people directly.
Mmm but companies super don’t like the govt touching their money printing machines and they are full of scary lawyers. Individuals on the other hand don’t have time, money, lawyers or knowledge to fight back.
What’s this about? Government-mandated to reduce emissions? Switching to electric, or just “better” ICE cars?
AFAIK pollution is a serious problem in India’s cities - but people like this guy are going to defend their “personal freedoms” (cleverly masked as economical concern) tooth and nail.
edit: I stand corrected. This is someone being upset about bad policy. Still, the “wife” and “1km”, both suggesting this is a secondary vehicle, triggers me. Standard upper middleclass griping.
Government-mandated to reduce emissions?
On the surface, yes. In reality they’re just offloading environmental responsibility on to citizens (and making them buy “better” ICE cars so the auto industry gets the profits) instead of improving and expanding public transit to make it easier to get around without a car.
cash for clunkers without the cash
Yeah it’s kind of strange policy. It applies only to the city, in the way a congestion charge would be set up (you can drive maybe 20 km off and get fuel), but the government is hard right wing, so they tend to pick solutions which will hurt the rich the least (they already have newer cars and tend to get newer cars as the old ones wear out), and not really mean anything to the poor (they don’t have cars at all, so this is all a moot point). The “middle class” as is the example here tend to suffer.
However, the middle class also has basically no solidarity with the poor, so like they’ll readily vote for policies which just wreck the poor, and because India is a “cheap labour” country, often the middle classes are sort of like the Petty Bourgeois in that they really hate the poor asking for more rather than punching up. Add that to the whole casteism / racism thing, and I don’t really feel bad for Kapil.
The other other thing is that India (Delhi) is somehow extremely pedestrian friendly while also being extremely hostile to pedestrians. Like imagine small walkable communities surrounded by stroads and a “might makes right” approach to driving, and a government which is committed to more roads (keeps the rich and the poors separated), and you have a place where kids might be able to walk to school on their own, or have walking mean near-certain death depending on exactly where they live in relation to the school.
To be fair, buses don’t solve last-mile situations like this one, unless you expect the route to become walkable by reduction in car numbers. Even then, I wouldn’t begrudge the busy housewife avoiding a long walk with a kid in tow.
Depends on the bus system. Some primarily operate within a square mile, and therefore primarily solve the last mile situation. They don’t solve the first/last 50m probably that isn’t really a problem anyways.
Whoa! Cool it.
The mandate isn’t from “government”. Apparently, the government failed to do much about pollution, so a regulatory body was set up by the courts, which body did some good things (ban diesels) but also some hamhanded things like judge only based on technology age rather than the odometer. Throwing away a ton of steel and manufacturing that has had minimal utilization isn’t going to help any.
You should’ve dissed the people who made scrapping the dedicated bus lane an election issue some years ago. I guess that never made it to the newspapers, and hence wasn’t discussed online either.
But forcing someone to replace a working vehicle? What is the environmental impact of manufacturing a new car and disposing of the old one? At what point does that actually outweigh the impact of emissions from a slightly older car, if ever?
He isn’t being forced to replace the car. He could walk. It’s 1km ffs
He also posted a photo of the road. It’s 2 lanes of chaotic traffic in each direction, no sidewalk. You can’t walk there, you’ll get hit by something sooner or later. It supposedly also gets up to 44C (of course on an asphalt road the air temp might be higher than that). I choose to believe that because apparently the temperature record in New Delhi is over 50C.
There must be a way to walk. Source: only a minority of Indians have cars.
Yes, you can also see mopeds and such in the photo. 2 stroke mopeds of course are even worse for emissions than cars. Modern 4 stroke ones not so much, but if you’re limited to 50cc, they’re ridiculously underpowered, not particularly long lasting, etc. Not sure what the regulations on this area in India.
And sure, you can definitely walk. You can walk on the side of a highway too, nobody’s stopping you. Why are people complaining about car centric city design in the US? You CAN walk. It’s not safe to in many places, but you CAN.
For real though, some people don’t want to walk on what is essentially a highway. It’s unsafe. There should be better options for pedestrians.
So of we annoy the wealthy class, they will use their considerable influence and have walkways built thus benefitting everyone?
Sounds good to me
Absolutely. It’s just that the guy driving a 15 year old Hyundai isn’t exactly the “wealthy class”. Laws like this affect mostly people who can barely afford cars, not people who can easily afford them. Actually I think the wealthy would be more annoyed if there were MORE people driving so more traffic jams, but that’s not a solution either.
If the government’s intent is to cut local emissions this could make sense.
Isn’t it true that once a car is built, it’s basically better for the environment to drive it until its wheels fall off instead of scrapping it to buy any new one (even electric) though ? He’s right that a lot of the time these schemes are thinly veiled auto industry handouts to stimulate the economy, instead of actual environmental regulations.
Every 35000 km or 21000 miles a gasoline car going on average 20km/l or 47mpg why H have produced the same amount of CO2 that it takes to make an electric car.
So if over the lifetime of the car you go less than 35000km you shouldn’t be changing it with an electric. Otherwise please do 😁
How long is that offset including charging? I know that EVs are still significant better, but it’s not like the moment an EV rolls out that it’s carbon emissions stop.
depends where you are i guess. if you’re in a country with a high proportion of the grid being powered by renewables or nuclear then the emissions do become negligable as soon as it’s delivered.
France is 70% nuclear plus renewables etc
The thing with EVs is that they get cleaner over time as cheap solar and batteries become a bigger part of the grid and old coal plants age out.
If you buy a diesel today, it’ll still be burning diesel in 2045.
Isn’t it true that once a car is built, it’s basically better for the environment to drive it until its wheels fall off instead of scrapping it
In terms of global warming; maybe. It depends on many factors when looking at a specific case. Another commenter already put some numbers together.
The environment, however, in this case is Dehli, a city with terrible air quality. Removing an active source of CO2, NOx, heavy metals, etc is good for that environment. Especially human lungs.
Except that i10, even an old one, is not a big source of CO2 or NOx
If the government provides safe and comfortable public transit instead.
The break even on carbon emissions from manufacture vs. daily use is somewhere between around 3 and 10 years. Big trucks on the low end.
better for the environment
Yes.
Better for your nerves? No.
Also you have to keep your vehicle in a state where it can drive safely, which leads to maintenance costs that rise over time. But safe for your environment as in the people around you, whether you reach your destination alive is of less importance.
The environmental break even period for EVs is getting shorter and shorter as the power grids get cleaner and cleaner.
It was a somewhat solid argument against buying new EVs to replace working ICE cars over 10 years ago, but now it’s really not.
Policies like these are almost never about overall environmental health. It’s to address acute problems. Delhi has a lot of smog that causes health problems. That is the specific problem they’re addressing
for one this severely depends on when it was built, old cars basically just convert 90% of the fuel into air pollution and spew it straight out the exhaust pipe, while modern cars actually use the fuel to go forward and provided the catalytic converter is in good shape they filter out some of the nastiness.
Bro your title is misleading.
Indian man upset that the government is forcing him to buy a new car
Your title makes the man sound like he’s complaining about his wife
That’s a fair point actually. I’ll change it
Don’t complain about 1km school runs until you have tried to do it on foot - in Delhi. Using a car might be the only halfway safe method in that area.
ITT: Some people want OOP’s wife and kid to walk to school on what’s essentially a highway. Others seem to realize that there might be a reason why OOP’s wife needs the car, and given that OOP’s done 65000 km in 15 years, he’s not exactly doing a whole lot of driving with it.
There’s also suggestions of using public transport, but if that even exists for their route, OOP’s wife can’t exactly just go walk on a bus, she could get gang raped, because this is Delhi.
We’re not talking about a big SUV either. It’s a tiny little hatchback, the most city-friendly car possible:
The situation sucks for everyone involved. Whereas in the west we’re used to it being just a transit availability issue, in parts of the world there’s also the safety issue. Yes, the famous gang-rape-set-on-fire-murder case was 13 years ago, but that doesn’t mean Delhi is magically safe now. It’s still a huge issue.
The has got to be an alternate route that is nicer than that, that’s wild.
But I get that sone areas are incredibly car centric and leave you little choice.
The has got to be an alternate route that is nicer than that, that’s wild.
Well they could also be lying or exaggerating to make a point, but we don’t really know.
But I get that sone areas are incredibly car centric and leave you little choice.
That’s what I witnessed when I visited the US, though I went on the east coast so not as car centric as the rest of the country. Haven’t been to India, so I’m not sure how bad it is there for real.
My own country isn’t exactly the paragon of public transit, but it’s good enough that you’ve got literal carbrains going “eh I could just take the bus to work and have a fun project car instead of a boring daily commuter”. Walking is an option pretty much everywhere too, even the large stroads leading in and out of cities (essentially the highway continuing into the city, really), have sidewalks and pedestrian crossings. If I need to go 1 KM in any direction here, I walk
1km 🤡
On the streets of New Delhi this will probably take just as long as walking. Need the AC though.
I’ve been to Mumbai, and 1km is fine for us Europeans, but depending on their location, it can be a life-threatening experience due to the intense traffic, pollution and heat.
That sounds really dangerous. Someone should ban fuel there to make it safer.
Unfortunately fuel being burned in other countries is still heating up their environment.
Also idk if you’ve heard, but India isn’t exactly a rich place. A lot of people can’t afford EVs. Despite the fact that yes, the Indian market has cheap options available. But my man in the tweet has been nursing a Hyundai i10 for 15 years. He ain’t exactly trying to spend money on cars.
The entire policy is designed to hurt poor people that are car dependent (if you look at the photo of the street in his other tweet, you’ll see why he isn’t walking the 1 kilometer. There’s no sidewalk).
If the government also gave him a good public transit option with AC, the fuel ban could easily be justified. As it is now, rich people will buy newer cars and poor people will be criminals, or take on debt they can’t afford to get buy newer cars.
Longer. It takes about 12 minutes to walk 1km. A car in Delhi traffic will take about 20 minutes to cover that during the morning rush hour
Yeah it’s the heat, pollution, and safety (not sure about sidewalks there though) rather than distance. I used to live in a tropical country and walked just a little over 1km to work. I had to wear a running shirt and change into my actual shirt when I arrived at the office because I’ll be drenched in sweat. I also had to wear a mask because of the pollution.
Sadly 1km is not the dumbest distant i have seen
Back when I walked my kids to school a parent who shared a fence with the school would drive them around a piece of grass the the front of the school and drop them of. The path through the grass was along side their side garden wall and shorter than the road they drove.
Of course it was a huge 4x4 to boot
I used to walk 500m round trip to nearby restaurant for lunch, everyone i met will comment on how far that is. Of course, i take it to heart and now drive my 4x4 there.
Nah just kidding, i now ride a bike, often 3.5km round trip for lunch.
I used to live next to some folk who would drive 300 metres to the gym
Yeah, that one always gets me: and then they run 5 miles on a treadmill.
I always thought the equipment should all be hooked up to some sort of generator somehow so that the place could turn all that energy being spent exercising into electricity for the lights etc. There could also be pancakes 🥞
Human exercise produces so little electricity that it would probably be a net negative to produce everything required for this gimmick.
You need an exercise bike to produce something like a few hundred watts at most, if you can keep up an intense session. Continous stable power generation will be lower.
And everything which isn’t a bike will have much lower peak power generation capacity, and will be less efficient too
I bet a place like that already exists somewhere!
I read an article forever ago about a place in Tibet that wasn’t on the grid and had pedal chargers for some laptops at a computer cafe
I once helped ride a stationary bicycle for 2 hours to charge batteries enough to watch a movie. So it does exist.
It’s like slavery, but with extra steps.
People will go very far to show others their status
It may not be carbrain so much as shitty car-centric infrastructure.
Certainly seems so. From the picture the OOP posted, it doesn’t look like there’s paved walkways
This dude is the one living in a fool’s paradise with infrastructure like that, and I say that as someone living in a fool’s paradise with infrastructure only a little better than that.
Honestly if he’s done 65000 km in 15 years it may well be that he only uses it to drive routes where you literally can’t walk, like this one.
A 5-8kg school bag is insane. What the hell is going on there? Where I live, it’s only 2kg.
Lucky you. I think school bags in many countries, even developed ones are at an abuse level. When I was 12 my bag often weighed 10kg+, no lockers. I had hoped the situation had improved until I spoke to my 20 years younger cousin, it’s still the same shit. I believe it is probably a major contributing factor to scoliosis and kyphosis for children and teenagers, but still it persists
No lockers? So you had to drag your books to school every day? That is child abuse. I didn’t have lockers and neither do my kids but we have cubbies to dump everything in. Only things that went in our bags was lunch, water and homework.
Don’t forget to buy F1 tickets.
Haven’t there been multiple cases of women getting gang raped on indian public transport?
Public transit is not necessary for a 1km distance.
Right, but also there’s the whole gang rape thing… Imma go ahead and say people should do what makes them feel safe from gang rape.
It’s Delhi though. Not many sidewalks and it’s boiling hot outside.
He also posted a photo of the road. It’s 2 lanes of chaotic traffic in each direction, no sidewalk. You can’t walk there, you’ll get hit by something sooner or later. It supposedly also gets up to 44C (of course on an asphalt road the air temp might be higher than that). I choose to believe that because apparently the temperature record in New Delhi is over 50C.
I mean, I’m pretty sure I’ve heard of recent cases where women have been gang raped just walking down the street as well, but my comment was more referring to ops comment that they should be agitating for better public transport. I agree with the sentiment, but there might be a safety factor pushing the lady to drive. That’s possibly true for walking too. Walking may also not be feasible due to lack of walking infrastructure or mobility issues. My mother in law probably couldn’t walk a kilometre, she’s not obese and is mostly mobile, but she’s just had multiple knee replacements and walking that distance isn’t possible.
Okay, that’s horrible, but in a country with around 1.5 billion people things can be both incredibly rare and happen every week.
Delhi (and the broader NCR) is generally unsafe for women. I have heard from female friends that they don’t even look at job offers from NCR for this reason.
well, it is car traffic in India, maybe in Dheli. can get quite crazy so I am not sure you are expecting them to walk there? but to be fair, not clear from the article.
I am indeed expecting them to walk. People (me included) walk longer distances in Indian traffic in far worse conditions, a kilometer is quite literally child’s play
We know way too little about this situation to be judging this family so harshly. What if the child is disabled and has mobility issues? What if the walk is on a busy road with no sidewalks? What if the path is up and down a very steep hill? Maybe they can be walking this every day, but maybe not…if you wanna complain about the culture being car-centric, fine, but there’s not enough info to blame the family.
Being driven to school has a bad effect on your spatial intelligence. Disabled kids don’t deserve that.
What if the walk is on a busy road with no sidewalks?
Guess what:
OP of course says that he’s used to walking in worse, therefore OOP’s kid should also just walk on the sidewalkless busy road.
I walked (or cycled or took the bus in the winter) to school when I was a kid, but this is not a safe environment, why do we want kids to walk here:
Alright, so I’m not a regular here, I’m a Gearhead who lives in an Unfortunately car centric area. I like cars, I think they’re neat, I HATE that we need them to commute.
I don’t understand why cars are being banned after an arbitrary time limit. 15 years for petrol? Until year I drove a 30 year old petrol Toyota which pulled almost 50MPG on the highway, could have done better with some simple mods but I live in the mountains and needed the power for uphill.
I understand the desire to keep older more polluting vehicles off the road but arbitrarily declaring vehicles EOL because of their age is ridiculous.
Am I missing the point here? I’d appreciate some input because this feels like a bad move all around.
The government’s purported logic is that emissions standards from 15 years ago were lax and are much tighter now and therefore vehicles of that age are contributing to pollution. On the face of it that makes sense; Delhi’s AQI is one of the worst in the world, and emissions standards here were pretty meh until the 2010s.
In reality it’s because the auto industry wants you to buy new cars. That’s it. If the government was actually focused on limiting pollution they’d be investing heavily in efficient public transit and walking/biking infrastructure and enforcing things like a congestion tax to push people towards said options, but they’re just offloading it on to regular people so they can make a fuckton of money without having to spend any.
all car bans should come with free bikes and public transport
