Environmental and economic effects of introducing Japanese eco-cars into Indian market

With an increasing economic growth in India, harmful environmental effects such as emissions come into the picture, out of which automobile sector contributes to a major percentage. There is a need for reduction in vehicular emissions with increasing demand in 4-wheeler passenger vehicles. A major step towards reducing emissions is introducing Electric Vehicles and Hybrid Electric Vehicles. With rapid rising fuel prices in India, this future direction of automobiles is more sought. The performance of these vehicles depends on the diving behaviour and vehicle drive train configuration and the driving behavior in turn depends on factors such as road infrastructure, traffic conditions and driver mentality. All commercial vehicles are designed considering several factors such as vehicle operating range, accelerations, decelerations, maximum speed, power output at various stages and factors as such which are directly represented by a driving pattern. Hence a driving pattern is necessary to design the components for a HEV. A driving pattern was constructed based on actual speed-time data collected from diverse cities in India. Japanese automobile industry being one of the leading manufacturers of EVs and HEVs and owning a considerable portion of automobile market in India could possibly help in introducing HEVs into India. Hence different HEVs, Gasoline and Diesel cars were tested on this driving pattern to accumulate data pertaining to designing process.