Hybrid: A Solution Worth Supporting
This month Car India celebrates its 14th anniversary and I would like to thank all our readers, supporters, and manufacturers for being with us for the past 14 years.
This month we have a couple of exclusive stories for you, starting with the Porsche 911 drive in Germany and the two sevens from BMW — the new X7 and the smart plug-in hybrid 7 Series — besides the first Indian drive of the very first car from Kia, the Seltos.
The sales of new automobiles keep sliding month on month and we did not see any incentives or an effort made to boost these sales in the recent Budget. The only reduction in GST was for EVs, from 12 per cent to five per cent, which is a welcome. However, the government needs to do more and there has to be a push for hybrid cars, for this is something that will reduce pollution immediately and does not require an electric infrastructure.
The plug-in hybrid BMW we drove is a smart hybrid if you are driving from one city to another. All you have to do is feed your destination into the navigation system and the car will drive on EV mode within the city, switch to the IC engine on the highway, and also make sure that you have enough charge when you enter the destination city limits before switching back to the EV mode. The 7 Series returned more than 30 km to a litre of petrol and to top this, the new diesel plug-in hybrids return more than 70 km/l with nearly zero NOx.
Every time you browse through the magazine, you get to see and read the names of the editorial staff, but you never read or see the pictures of the designers, the copy editor or the marketing team. I would like to thank them all for their hard work and support for the past 14 years.
EDITOR – ASPI BHATHENA
