BSVI, diesel cars and air quality

Overdrive magazine has been serving the needs of my inner car-buff, replacing Car and Driver from earlier days. Recently they have been publishing some good primers on automobile technology including one on electric cars. In the latest issue they have a good in-depth article on the new BSVI (BS-6) emission standards (http://overdrive.in/…/everything-you-need-to-know-about-bs…/) that is going to come into effect from April 1, 2020. What this means is that all new vehicles (big and small, 2-3-4 wheelers) sold after this date have to comply with BSVI emission requirements which are much more stringent than BSIV (BS-4) which was adopted in 2017. BSVI is based on the European standard Euro 6.

BSVI impacts diesel cars more because diesel engines pollute more and car-makers will have to equip diesel cars with cleaner running engines and more importantly install post-emission devices like DPF (diesel particulate filters) to meet the standards. This means that diesel cars will get more expensive. Also, in order to meet BSVI, diesel cars also need to use BSVI diesel. Indian gas refineries have been working on producing the cleaner burning diesel which should become available throughout the country by April 1st. Cars sold before the date of course can continue to run and they can use the BSVI diesel and will emit a bit less. BSVI implies significant reduction in nitrous oxides, sulphur content and particulate matter (80-90% reduction) all of which have been linked with respiratory and other illnesses. It will perhaps take years to see any noticeable improvement in air quality as more BSVI vehicles replace older cars. But it looks like a good thing.

In a nutshell, cleaner diesel, less emissions from new diesel vehicles, more expensive diesel cars.

Spreading positivity - kudos to Indigo Airlines

So, for a while now, when I read the newspaper in the morning, I get depressed because almost everything being reported is negative. This happens to some extent in social media as well. I recently participated in a Mindfulness workshop where people echoed this concern. So I have made a resolution to do my small bit and spread positivity around.

The first one I want to do is to appreciate Indigo Airlines for their on-time performance and how seriously they take it. I have been taking some late evening flights recently; while it is par for the course for most airlines to accumulate delays over the day, I was impressed how Indigo was on-time even in these evening flights. They seem to obsess about it to the point which causes some inconvenience to passengers (like they put you in the bus and go wait in the tarmac while the arriving passengers from the plane you're about to board are still disembarking; this helps parallelize and shorten the deboarding/boarding process); but I will take this minor inconvenience any day over waiting in the airport for a flight that got delayed by 2 hours. They also do smart things like adding some buffer to their flying time. This surely implies that they are not jamming in as many flights as they possibly could in a day at the cost of on-time performance. 

And there are some signs that this may be infectious. In the last GoAir flight I took, they started asking the passengers to help in getting the cabin ready for the next flight to shorten the time they are on the ground (something Indigo has been doing for many years). 

- Balaji