Budget 2016- New Car Buying Costlier

In his budget speech today, the Finance Minister made all new car buying a costlier exercise. While he announced that a 1% additional tax on cars costing above Rs 10 lakh, he has also made small cars more expensive.

FM Jaitley announced that a 1% infra cess will be levied on small petrol cars on one hand while on the other a 2.5% infra cess will be imposed on diesel cars. He also said that a 4% additional levy will be imposed on high-capacity passenger vehicles and SUVs.

According to CRISIL, "The additional 2.5-3.5% cess will further pull down demand for diesel cars & SUVs. Currently, 40% of total passenger vehicle sales are of diesel vehicles."

Exempted from the above infrastructure cess are three wheelers, electric, hybrid and hydrogen vehicles. Moreover, motor vehicles registered as a taxi, cars for physically disabled and ambulances are also exempt.

The Supreme Court earlier in December 2015 had banned sale of diesel vehicles with engines of 2000 cc and above in the National Capital Region till March 31,2016. Now, Mr. Jaitley announced that this is a move aimed at checking pollution and encouraging use of hybrid cars. Perhaps there is an opportunity for car makers in the guise of a road bump. 

Suck, Squeeze, Bang, Blow.

Fear not, you have not strayed on an NSFW site!

This is a very easy way for those who are mechanically-challenged to understand how a 4-stroke engine works. In fact, all modern light to medium engines used in motor vehicles today are 4-stroke internal combustion (IC) engines. The four stroke engine was first demonstrated by Nikolaus Otto in 1876, hence it is also known as the Otto cycle.  A mechanical engineer will describe the 4 strokes of the engine as the intake stroke, the compression stroke, the combustion stroke, and an exhaust stroke.

However, the diesel & petrol engines differ in the manner fuel is ignited in the power stroke.

1. The Intake Stroke:
During this time, the piston is moving downward and only air is drawn into the cylinder. This occurs on a normally aspirated engine as a result of the difference between atmospheric pressure and the depression created by the piston and the piston ring seal. The intake valve opens up and air is sucked into the cylinder.

2. The Compression Stroke:
The piston is moving upward in the bore and compresses the air into the very small volume of the combustion chamber and raises its temperature high enough to ensure auto-ignition of the fuel charge. The air is squeezed during the compression stroke by the movement of the piston. This intense squeezing raises the temperature of the air above 800 degrees.­­

3. The Power Stroke:
As the piston reaches the top of the cylinder, during the combustion stroke, atomized fuel is injected. On contact with the very hot air, the ignited gases expand (or go “bang).

In a petrol engine, the spark plug fires, igniting the compressed fuel. As the fuel burns it expands, driving the piston downward.

4. The Exhaust Stroke:
Finally, the byproducts of combustion are expelled from the cylinder and combustion chamber. First, by the pressure differential between the bore and the exhaust port of the head (this is identified as blow down), and then by the movement of the piston upward. The waste gases exit the cylinder bore through the exhaust port in the cylinder head into the exhaust system.

In the four-stroke cycle, the following sequence of events is then continuously repeated when the engine is running.

Why Volkswagen Cheated with their Diesel Engine

The engine cheat code scandal happened because Volkswagen (VW) is one of the biggest champions of diesel engines. 'Clean diesel' engines was how it planned to achieve its objective of becoming the world's largest car maker. This demanded a huge growth in North America, a market with strict rules regarding engine power, emissions standards, and fuel economy. But VW's engineers could not meet the twin goals of delivering both, a good fuel economy & low emissions and so they cheated.

What they did.

Most cars today including VW's cars have engines controlled by computer chips for optimum performance. VW added some software code so that the controllers of their 2.0-liter turbo diesel engines would recognise the protocols of the EPA's FTP-75 test. The controllers would then recalibrate the engine to reduce oxides of oxygen when undergoing testing thus ensuring that the engine was US EPA Tier 2 compliant. The controllers would revert the engine to its normal working parameters when it sensed the car was back on-road.

The EPA’s Tier 2 Test set extremely tough requirements, cutting allowable oxides of nitrogen by 83% over Tier 1 regulations. VW could have used Selective catalytic reduction (SCR), which involves spritzing small amounts of urea and water into the exhaust stream to facilitate the breakdown of NOx into nitrogen and carbon dioxide. But that meant reengineering cars like the Jetta & Golf popular in the US. So with the Tier 2 deadline looming in 2007, VW was faced with the prospect of spending millions on an aging product in the American market where just 0.2 percent cars were diesels.

So in 2009, out comes a totally compliant Jetta TDI model. It took care of emissions with an underfloor NOx trap, in which NOx is captured, then converted to nitrogen and carbon dioxide via occasional spurts of diesel fuel. It didn’t work quite as well as SCR, but it was a lot easier and cheaper to retrofit.  The advertised city and highway figures of 30 and 41–42 mpg (depending on the transmission) showed the engine to be very fuel-efficient. Its just that the engine was programmed to squirt less fuel into the exhaust when the car was on the road, allowing more NOx out of the tailpipe and raising mileage.

Tough NOx standards with Euro 6 regulations would come into effect in Europe (the market that VW dominates and has 55% diesel passenger cars) only in 2014.  VW engineers must have thought that they would go with the cheat code only until 2014, by which time better NOx-reducing technology would be incorporated through normal platform updating. Why VW would continue to include the cheat code in engines built in 2014 and later is the billion dollar question.

Its Tiago. Tata Tiago.

Following the outbreak of the ‘Zika’ virus, Tata has rechristened the Zica to ‘Tiago’. This follows post the online contest run by the company where the public could submit their choice of name for the small hatchback. The contest threw up three names – Civet, Adore and Tiago, of which Tiago came up trumps.

The model will be positioned between the Bolt and Nano, replacing the Indica eV2, This is Tata's way of fighting back in a segment dominated by Maruti and Hyundai with the Celerio and i10, respectively. Highlights of the upcoming car include a pair of all-new three-cylinder engines – petrol and diesel, as well as a strong suite of features. This hatchback is expected in the coming months with its compact sedan sibling expected in the second half of 2016.