HYBRID CARS VS OUR WALLETS

Ah the Honda Civic, a car in which you can barely tell if the engine is on or not, it’s so quiet and the drive is smoother than a baby’s bottom (Not to be taken literally). A car you’d perhaps one day dream of owning because it costs a humble thirteen lakhs, but wait, you care about the environment and you’ve just heard that the Civic has a hybrid version(easier on the conscience and the environment). You inquire about the price, a whopping twenty one lakhs! Forget it, I’ll take the cheaper version and maybe try not wasting water while I’m brushing my teeth to help Mother Nature.

Sadly this is the scenario in our country, there are a lot of hybrid cars in the market but there are no takers. The Honda Civic, the Toyota Prius, Mahindra is launching a hybrid version of the Scorpio later this year, even Tata Motors is hopping on the hybrid bandwagon with a hybrid version of the Nano.

What is a hybrid car? A hybrid vehicle is one that uses two or more distinct power sources to move the vehicle. It combines an internal combustion engine and one or more electric motors; in layman’s terms your car will have two engines running simultaneously, electric and petrol.

Hybrid vehicles can reduce air emissions of smog-forming pollutants by up to 90% and cut carbon dioxide emissions by half. A Hybrid car recharges its own batteries while the car is being driven; unlike most electric cars. In addition, hybrids can go faster than most electric cars.

There are 334,000 hybrid cars in Japan, about 290,271 in the United States and in reply India has a dismal 100 or so hybrid cars on the road. If hybrids are much better than regular cars in terms of fuel efficiency and carbon emission then what’s the problem? The problem is there’s a 100% import duty slap on the face. Basically that means you have to pay twice the cost of the petrol version to own a hybrid Civic. Honda saw poor demand for its Hybrid Civic; it was forced to offer a discount of as much as Rs 8 lakh per car just to clear stocks.

Why doesn’t the government offer any tax concession? Hybrid cars receive a favourable tax treatment in other countries as they consume less fossil fuel. The Honda Civic is currently being imported as a completely built unit (CBU) attracting an import duty of 104%.

There are close to 51 lakh petrol cars on Indian roads, consuming around 315 crore litre of petrol a year. Introduction of hybrid cars in the market can bring these numbers down. End of the day in India cheap works, in order to make it a viable option the price of hybrid cars has to be made cheaper.

“For 200 years we've been conquering Nature. Now we're beating it to death”

Tom McMillan, quoted in Francesca Lyman, The Greenhouse Trap, 1990.