I agree that India and China have significant coal resources and would depend on coal to generate power for next several years. But it is still a good idea to use Electric/Hybrid vehicles since

* When power is being produced centrally (powerplant) it is much easier to employ efficient methods and pollution control. For example, an automobile's efficiency is about 30% while that of a combined cycle powerplant can go till 60%.

* Even with coal, you can employ less-pollution methods (like IGCC) and use coal effectively.

* Hybrids are supposedly very efficient when compared to petrol/diesel vehicles because they burn fuel only for a fration of time and use 'stored' energy. This reduces the emissions during idling and cruising. I presume they also recover breaking energy (not sure they do) which makes them even more efficient.

So my take, bring them on!!

-Shastri

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IMHO Electirc: Even with the amount of load shedding We barely have enough electricity. Electric cars as mentioned by blrsri is not for India, well at least not now as it would eat in to the domestic consumption. E85: This is a new fad that's in use in USA. These are called Felxi-fuel cars which can run using regular petrol or ethanol. Ethanol is made from Corn and the emissions are far lesser than regular fuel. While this sounds great, there is some controversy around how ethanol is produced. Coal is used to fire up/filter so there is some perishable fuel resource being used. Corn used for E85 is genetically modified version of "ordinary" corn, so another point is this would drive farmers to cultivate the E85 corn and that would affect the food supply. Hybrid: AKA Prius from Toyota, Civic from Honda and many others. This seems like the best solution at hand. The concept is the same as the Dynamo that we used on cycles to fire up the light. The batteries get charged during normal running of the vehicle and it the vehicle is traveling at low speeds then the battery kicks in. This is a pattern of driving in most city conditions. Hydrogen Cell: This is by far the best idea so far where the fuel is hydrogen and waste product is water (wow). But there are a lot of challenges, the first one is handling hydrogen as it is very volatile and the second is to make the car cost effective. Currently there are couple of vehicles which are leased to people in California, they currently cost $10 mil (i think) but is leased at $500/month. The upside is there are a lot of companies which are taking initiative in this area, so we may see something happen sooner than later

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Prius is one hybrid that is like the model T for cars. But we need to get further..its interesting news that our own HAL pioneers in composites usage.. India should capitalize on all such good work and come up with a hybrid of our own..like the tata's have done for 1Lakh car(suspect generous use of composites is already done there)! M&M has talked about hybrid scorpio..not sure if SUV's the way to go for hybrids..but its an initiative anyways! About latest advances for hybrids is the work on batteries for hybrids.. "the new batteries which “take up 30% less volume than those from Toyota“ and “allow you to go three times further for the same weight than French models, " http://www.petrol-head.com/2007/12/german-battery.html We should use this for the cars!

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Todays TOI carried a front page article talking about duty cuts on energy efficient cars! This I think is the indication that the Hybrids will be here and will be affordable...a good move though delayed in coming. Honda would beat the Toyota's in the release of their Civic Hybrid. Wonder how it works on the mileage.. We need hybrids on the lines of Prius..for mass usage!

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Looks like they are neck to neck on the mileage. See the following site http://www.greenhybrid.com/compare/mileage/

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Civic looks its bigger so might takes up more space on road..Prius is somewhat smaller..anyways lets see. Also they say the build and drive quality of Prius is much better than the HCH. It looks like the modified policies in India will be announced next week..if it drastically changes the prices of our own 'Reva'..we might see many of them on our roads! '..oops can you share your charging point?'

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Size wise Civic does look bigger but not a whole lot. Prius looks are more fancy because it was designed from scratch with a "less polluting" concept in mind where as Civic hybrid looks exactly like non-hybrid civic versions because it was just adapted. In terms of cost (in the US), it is at least $7000-$8000 more (than regular Civic and Corolla) and there is a wait period of 3-4 months. When it is released in India (I feel) this would be in a premium market sector out of reach for many middle class families. Also the hybrid movement has been made popular here in the US because of perks that come with it; like using the car pool lane and tax rebates. It is very hard to imagine these perks being doled out by our government. Here is a comparison of the 2 models http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/Drives/Comparos/articleId=108445

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do not understand the logic.. environment friendly car are needed in more numbers on the road..for this the cost needs to be less! anyways, if TOI can be believed, the current cost of civic hybrid is 20L in India and this is slated for duty rebates, this might come down to 16L?! This is still way too high for budgets like mine which hovers around a third of that price! -sigh- But the hybrid concept is amazing.. Petrol engines spend maximum of the fuel while stopping and starting(traffic signals)..and slow traffic..hence the hybrids shut off the petrol engines when the vehicle is stalled/moving slow. They run then with the electric engines..when the vehicle touches cruising speed..the petrol engines kicks in with more power and inturn chargin the batteries..incredible!

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