Environmentalists can breathe easy for the world’s cheapest car (just $2,500), the TATA Nano, which was unveiled on the 10th of January in New Delhi, is actually less polluting than most cars. Though the prospect of the Nano’s popularity scares environmental campaigners like Sunita Narain and RK Pachauri in India, one has to understand that if it was not the Tata’s, then there would definitely be a different player in the market which would have tried to bring the joys of motoring to millions of Indians, some what similar to what the Volkswagen Beetle did for Germany and the Mini for Britain. According to Tata Group’s Chairman Ratan Tata, the Nano is a 33 PS (33 hp/24 kW) car with a 624 cc rear engine and rear wheel drive, making it the first time a 2-cylinder gasoline engine, and has a mileage of 4.55 L/100 km (51.7 mpg (US), 62.8 mpg (UK)) under city road conditions, and 3.85 L/100 km on highways (61.1 mpg (US), 73.4 mpg (UK)). Apparently the Nano complies with Bharat Stage-III and Euro-IV emission standards, and if that is true then simple mathematics and evidence is there to prove that the Nano is indeed more eco-friendly than most other cars. Euro-IV cars produce one gram of carbon monoxide and 0.08 gram of nitrous oxide. To convert them into CO2 equivalent, a conversion factor recommended by IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) is applied…It is 3 for carbon monoxide and 310 for nitrous oxide. After all the addition and the multiplication we get 30 grams per kilometer. Hence each time a Tata Nano moves a kilometer, it will release 30 grams of CO2 equivalent material into the atmosphere. This is 40 percent less than what all others cars produce (50 grams/kilometer or more) — and there are more than 5 million cars in India today. So you see, it is better that those concerned for the environment chanelize their energies after the bigger and more polluting cars, than a car which is truly capable of making the dream come true of owning a car for millions of people. Image Via: Economictimes
