e-vehicles’ Ungreenness

 

e-vehicles’ Ungreenness

How does one define “Greenness” of anything, be it of a product, process, behaviour, or life form? And, shouldn’t “Greenness” be decided over the life of anything being assessed? Of course, the “Greenness” of a product must be contingent of the “Greenness” of the process that produces it. “End justifies the means,” has no purchase here.  

Oh, you must already be tired of the term “Greenness”, the fifth time it has occurred in these five lines, including this one. So, I take to its opposite, hoping you would not get tired so easily–Ungreenness! Easy to define–the quality of not being “Green”! Wherever and however you define “Greenness”, my ungreenness stands defined!

In India, if you see any vehicle that has a green licence plate, you can rest assured it is an e-wheeler. In my opinion, this is virtue signalling by the owner of the e-vehicle, enabled by the government authority. “Look, I am environmentally conscientious! Take that.” I would call this the attitude of king-of-the-environmental-road.

The first consequence of such an attitude is one does not care about the other road users. The persistent attitude of this kind is to be found amongst drivers of large vehicles in India–trucks, buses and more recently, SUVs. They do not care about the little people. 

 I do not know how many of you recall the added features of SUV type vehicles when they came into fashion in India. They are still in fashion. They screamed, “I am the king of the road!” with powerful head lights that made smaller vehicles and two wheelers seek refuge close to the gutters even in day light (standing toe-to-toe to them is no go), blinded everyone else on the road in the night with extra lights (probably illegal, but who cares), gaudy and fearsome front end treatments through extras (and sometimes at the rear) and many others, basically giving the vehicle a visage of oncoming terror! When they pass, you let out an audible sigh of relief.

Now, the only comparable and equally dismissive of the others on the road are the e-wheelers. These are precisely opposite of the big fellas, being the silent screamers! The sound a vehicle is expected to make-that of the tyres abrading the road surface-is the only sound e-wheelers make. No rattles of the engines that tattle the presence of the vehicle . I have mentioned this aspect in an earlier post that drew no comments. So be it. Neither the e-wheelers nor the other road users care, even the pedestrians, save yours truly!  

In the above, I am on a short jaunt in which my whole purpose was to take down the haughtiness of e-wheelers minorly. I am now going to bring them down further by a substantive notch from their high perch, on a longer trip. I question the e-aspect of e-wheelers themselves.

The e-wheeler maybe termed “Green” only if the smoke from the tailpipes is the sole consideration. This is like counting the devotees at Tirumala (Tirupathi) by taking the record of only those who had their heads shaved off as a votive offering! See the Hindi movie Oh! My God based on a Gujarati story. That could make you think about taking a votive oath on any matter, in any manner! It did me much before I saw the movie. 

It is Lithium ion batteries that drive most of the e-wheelers. I would not offer a reasonably long list of potential pollution items and their causes, but suffice it to know that on-road pollution (discounting the common pollution factors for all rubber tired vehicles; rubber particles, PM 2.5, PM 10 particlulate matters etc.) is very low while the cradle-to-grave pollution is high. Mining, transporting, processing, disposal of the waste products to get a functional Lithium ion battery makes all e-wheelers less “Green” and more “pinkish”, if you get what I mean.

A short detour.

TN 93 ZA 7925

The above could be a typical license plate (number plate) for an e-wheeler (scooter) in Tamil Nadu. The pink color tells the unvarnished truth–the vehicle is not “Green”, but pinkish; “Deserves some appreciation,” it murmurs and with humility. This message could stick to the driver too! That is to hoping!

Let us talk about recharging the batteries. At a battery charging station, from where does the power come is the major determinant of whether one’s e-wheeler is “Green” or some other color. I would not care to find out the percentage of charging stations that themselves are powered from “Green” sources.

In India, electricity rate for domestic consumers is indiscriminately subsidized. Therefore, these e-wheelers get their vehicles charged in their homes, and power comes from, in most cases, coal- or gas-powered thermal power stations. Now I believe, the background should be a little darker pink. Anyways, no green.

There is a serious opposition to designating hydroelectric powerhouses as “Green”. Methane emissions from anaerobic decay in the reservoir give the lie to it.  The US President Donald (Jellybean) Trump (I am reduced to quoting him, Oh! My God) says that windmills are not eco-friendly, as death of bats on the low-pressure side of the rotor indicate (the true reason is off-shore windmills spoil the view of the sea from his golf course-cum-condominium project in Scotland). PV cells occupy a large area, and on this count, they are not “Green”.

Therefore, the question whether, hydro-projects, windmills, photovoltaic cells are “Green” is unanswered. Therefore, on the second step, no recharging station can be certified “Green”! Certify them “Pink”, then!

Lastly–this point was brought to me in bas relief in a meeting of the Institution of Civil Engineers (India)­–Tesla body parts are made of aluminium, magnesium and steel. The other car makers may not be using magnesium, yet the other two metals are not guilt-free as regards eco-friendliness. There was a huge protest against bauxite mining to extract aluminium in Odisha, an Indian state, just as Tamil Nadu is. Forget about the fuel, even these are “deep pinkish”.

All in all, nothing can be “Green”, including human beings themselves – breathing in Oxygen and Nitrogen, and breathing out Carbon dioxide and water vapour. We are products of ungreen processes, the whole of evolution of animals is. About plants and fungi, I maintain my silence.

The proper metric, in my opinion is that eco-friendliness should be measured on a scale of ungreenness, or to put it less clumsily, on a negative scale of “Greenness”.

I cannot let this opportunity go without mentioning Richard Feynman! Ther is an elementary particle called positron that is the exact replica of an electron but for the charge it carrie-positive. He took positron as an electron going in negative time! Negative scale!

Raghuram Ekambaram