708, but never a dull moment

Did I say before that I love my car? Ummm, maybe a few times. Ok, a lot of times! Fact is, I really love my Skoda Laura. And now I love it even more.

My lovely Laura ran for 708 km in one tankfull. That's almost a mileage of 13km/l in peak city traffic conditions! Isn't that fantastic?!?!

This along with the additional pleasure of driving an absolutely gorgeous car. One of the most rewarding things at the end of the day is to drive my automatic car in peak traffic and not be bothered with shifting gears or getting irked with the honking that is going on all around me. Just me. my music and a lovely drive.

But now here comes the rant.

It's the part after I have gotten out of the car is when the problem starts. The amount of honking that the people in this country are capable of is not even funny. I did this experiment standing outside my office building - which I might add is in the middle of a mostly residential area - to figure out how long the traffic outside can go without honking. Guess how long it was between honks?

4 seconds was the longest pause!

4 seconds!

That's insane!

There should be a law enacted that puts a fine of Rs 500 for anyone who honks.

The country would be a lot better place if it got a little bit quieter.

40,000 and 13

What's the relationship between those two numbers, you ask?

My lovely Skoda Laura just crossed into the 40,000 km zone since I bought the car in September of 2007. That's a lot of comfy mileage that I have clocked in this super car. A few long drives to Pune and Goa, a few short trips in and around Bangalore and a LOT of drives to the golf courses around here. Which brings me to the second number.

Played 13 over at KGA on Saturday. An early tee off from the back nine saw me play bogey golf for 9 holes with 2 pars and 2 double bogeys with every other hole played to a bogey. In this time, my partner and I had already lost the nine hole matchplay by being a hole down. Then started the front nine where I made birdie to square the match and my partner and I quickly ran up a 3UP lead. Finally managed to play to 4 over on the back nine to make it 13 over (85) for the round.

Also, this was the first time I was playing with the adjustments made to my Scotty Cameron putter on thursday. Until then, I had to change my putting stance and grip to be able to square the putter. Now, the putter has 4˚ less lie and has 2˚ more loft on it which makes it easier for me to hold in a regular putting stance. Only problem now is that I am missing more putts to the right, something that I need to correct soon.

The world is your spittoon, the country your trash can

I'm finally back…after 6 month and a few days. Yeah I know…this is becoming my usual theme. I promise to be back and then there's a long silence and then a post.

So here's hoping to an improved attitude towards blogging and trying to be regular. I am immediately reminded of Master Yoda's statement: "Do…Or do not…There is no try". Now you know why I am not a Jedi Master yet. Wish I was tho. Would have loved to do the Jedi mind trick on so many people.

Now to the reason for the irate heading. And here starts the rant…

My buddy and I were walking from UB City to the office (had to do some shopping at the Apple Store) and we had to cross the hellish intersection that is Richmond Circle. In the space of a few minutes that it took us to cross the road, we heard so many car honks that we could not hear each other think, least of all hear each other's voice. And every one of those people who honked somehow had the impression that honking would make them move faster.

On top of that, in the same time span, I counted at least 7 people spitting or throwing trash out of their car. What the hell is wrong with these people? And to top it all, the traffic police constable at the intersection was the model of apathy. Can't really blame him for being apathetic, cause he probably sees what I saw a few hundred times every day. It's easy to get desensitized when you are overexposed to these things.

Now that got me thinking as I was driving back home from office. It was a rare occasion that I was leaving office before peak traffic hit and so made it smoothly home in 20 minutes. As you folks would have read in my earlier posts, I have a very intelligent car that is the Skoda Laura. On it's mainframe display, I get readouts on how many kilometers I have driven since the engine was turned on, what speed I was driving at and most importantly, how much fuel I consumed on my drive. And to my wonder, I had run a mileage of 14.7km/l for my 20 minute drive back from work. Which meant I had consumed less than a liter of diesel to get from office to my home. The worm in my head started chewing on something.

The next day, I hit peak traffic on my way to work and noticed that this trip, I had averaged 9.8km/l and taken 40 minutes of starts and stop traffic to get to office. Hmmmm! That evening, my buddy and I were meeting for a drink at The Beach in Indiranagar and thought it would be best to drive straight from work. Guess what…we covered just 3km from the office in 41 minutes! 41 minutes! That's insane. By the time we got there, we had spent almost an hour in the car (for a short 8km) drive and averaged 8.2km/l.

Now let's do a bit of math.

If I did not hit traffic every day, I would average between 3 km/l and 5 km/l better during every drive. My car has a huge 60l fuel tank. Even if I use the pessimistic number of 3 km/l, that means that my car would have run for a hundred and eighty kilometers more on the same amount of fuel! That's a saving of more than 15 liters of fuel…translating to more than Rs 600 for every tank of fuel I pump into my car! An improvement of 25%!

Here's another interesting figure. I have had my car for the last 3 years and am on the verge of hitting 40,000 kilometers in it. That means I am averaging about 12,500 kilometers every year. Now extending the same calculation as above, considering the same efficiency (that is not completely accurate as I tend to do long drives - I love to drive - and that drives up the fuel efficiency even higher…so we are still pessimistic in our calculations), we would be able to drive the same amount of kilometers every year with 33% less fuel. Let's see how much we save, shall we?

12,500 kilometers x current average of 11 km/l = ~ 1140 liters of fuel = ~Rs 48,000.

12,500 kilometers x efficient average of 14 km/l = ~ 890 liters of fuel = ~Rs 37,000.

A saving of Rs 11,000! Eleven Thousand Rupees saved by one car! Just by improving traffic conditions and therefore fuel efficiency!

Not to mention the implied benefits of lesser smog (from lesser stops and starts), lower noise pollution (hopefully) and time saved for everyone.

And here's the kicker! As per the Petroleum Conservation Research Association, 51% of India's domestic fuel consumption is done by transport vehicles…cars, busses, trucks, rickshaws and all the rusty old things you see on the road that make you want to get a Tetanus shot just from looking at them. From the same PCRA website, India has more than 75 Million registered vehicles. Think about the sucker punch I'm about to throw at you.

If every vehicle saved Rs 10,000 annually due to better fuel efficiency achieved due to better traffic conditions, we would have saved…wait for it…16 BILLION DOLLARS!

16 BILLION DOLLARS!

Say it again after me…

16 BILLION DOLLARS! Savings!

Savings worth 16 BILLION DOLLARS!

Imagine what part of that money can be invested to better the traffic conditions going forward. And as technology improves, we will have better, more fuel efficient cars which will only improve our savings number.

How's that for analysis?

But for sure, there are people already doing this analysis. From the PCRA page again, we learn the New Delhi alone burns more than 990 Crore Rupees due to stopping at traffic lights. Just imagine!

And here I come back to the heading of the post…part of the money that we save can go towards putting trash cans every few feet. I think the current problem is both lack of social decorum as well as lack of opportunity to demonstrate it. To give you my example, I carry litter in my pockets until I see a trash can (which can sometimes be once I reach home). More trash cans and a cleaner city will only shame some people into not spitting everywhere and making this country a better place.

Oil prices, fuel efficiency and saber rattling

The last few months has been all about the record levels of fuel prices, what with the rising cost of crude oil and the $/barrel reaching new heights. Some analysts say that it will reach as high as $200 per barrel. This must sound like good news to all the OPEC nations and the BigOil corporations who are making record profits. 

While this definitely impacts the common man, it impacts in more ways than one. 

Last year, I made the decision to buy a fairly sophisticated car. Not only is this car a diesel car (making it a lot more cost effective in India, since diesel is still considered the farmer's fuel), it is also extremely fuel efficient. And it says so whenever I take it out for a drive. The display on the dashboard tells me all the information I need about the running of the car. The average speed, how far I have travelled since I last turned on the engine and - more importantly - how much fuel I'm consuming for that drive. I have a choice of keeping one of these indicators constantly on the display when I drive. Naturally, being Indian, I'm very concerned about how much fuel I burn getting from office to work and back.

What I have noticed is when I leave relatively early (courtesy having to drop my daughter to school every morning), I usually make it to office in around 25 minutes and the fuel efficiency readout shows 13.9 km/liter. The same journey at a slightly later time, or during traffic jam conditions, results in the readout showing 7.2 km/liter! And this is a good case!

When it rains in Bangalore, or because of the huge amounts of constructions(?) going on for the road leading to the new Bangalore International Airport, traffic piles up to such an extent that you can spend as much as an hour just clearing a small 1 km stretch on that road. I experienced it this morning when traffic refused to move for a long time and I watched as the counter moved steadily south to finally read 5.9 km/liter! With an average speed for the journey at 7 km/hour!

I just used up more than twice the amount of fuel for the same journey as I would have with relatively no traffic OR with infrastructure capable of handling the current traffic conditions. And this is for a very fuel efficient car. I shudder to think what it must be doing for mileage of older cars and ones that are not as tuned or as efficient. The problem is compounded even further when you consider that most of the cars running on the road are petrol, not diesel! 

It's one thing to talk about energy efficiency and pollution control, but all of that fine tuning and threshold setting comes to naught when you consider that most cars are running at speeds which are not the most optimum. That only causes the cars to burn more and pollute the environment more.

It's one thing about setting a high standard for cars being sold in India in terms of fuel efficiency and emission. It's a completely different thing when it comes to providing these efficient cars the necessary infrastructure to demonstrate that efficiency! And that is where we are lacking big time!

And to think that I would never have been able to quantify this had it not been for my car.

Mysore, No sore

On the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti...ok, ok, that's just an excuse for going out on a drive, we headed out to Mysore. The reason we gave ourselves was that the last time we had gone down to see the famous Mysore palace, our daughter was only 9 months old. So she has not seen a real life palace. Since we needed only an excuse to go on a long drive on such a fine national holiday, go to Mysore we did.

Not to take anything away from the reason for the holiday. As one of the finest examples of India, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (we call him Mahatma Gandhi here in India) was the inspiration for people like Dr Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela to choose the path of non violence as a form of protest. It is, to a large extent, to Mahatma Gandhi's credit that I am a free Indian with the freedom to write the kind of crap that I do on this blog.

Coming back to the topic, the decision to go to Mysore was an easy one to make. For one, it's just 150km from Bangalore. Secondly, the roads are pretty good to get there. And it would be a nice idea for my daughter to see how the kings of yesteryears lived.

So we left around 8am, wanting to get there without too much sun on our heads. When I started the car (oh, my lovely car), I could see that the car had 3/4th of the tank full. Enough fuel for the trip and more, I thought.

The drive was a breeze. The way the car handles, the ease with which it negotiates traffic, the comfort for the whole family (my daughter was sleeping sprawled on the back seat...and being as tall as she is, she still managed to sleep fairly stretched!). I had to rub my eyes when I saw the dashboard tell me that I was getting 16.7 km/l as my mileage. And all this while clipping on at 120km/hr on cruise control.

Even when I decided to floor it, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the transmission was humming on in the 4th gear way past the 120kmph mark and then still in 5th gear at the 140kmph mark. Only when I backed off the pedal did the 6th gear engage. I could have kept it floored for some more time (mainly to discovery the top speed of the car), but was sure that this was not the road to try these stunts on. What with people (and cattle) crossing the road at random intervals and from all possible places, it was the riskiest thing to do.

And then I discovered something about Indian traffic. No matter how fast you go, you will get slowed down by slower moving traffic and will lose your momentum. Not to mention your fuel. So instead of zipping around, I was driving at a fast, but not too fast, speed and watched as my fuel efficiency rode to newer heights. All this while making good time and enjoying the ride, not to mention the scenary.

And when the trip ended, I still had a lot of fuel left in the car. It was something I had never experienced when I was driving my old car (not to take anything away from it).

All in all, we had a lovely trip. Clicked a few pix (some I will post here tomorrow). A lovely day.

Happy Gandhi Jayanti!

I love my car!

The Laura is finally here!

And boy, is it great! All we have been doing the whole of the weekend is drive around in the car and discovery, or rather re-discover, the pleasure of driving. And the feeling is pure luxury wrapped in a lovely bun of exhileration.

I am yet to figure out a lot of the features of the car (there are so many of them) and that is a first for a technogeek like myself. The first thing I do with most new things is sit with the manual and understand how to operate it. This car has, for the first time, more features than I can manage to remember how to operate. And kudos to Skoda for that.

The performance of the car is fabulous, the handling amazing, the sound from the 12 speaker system sheer poetry. The comfort of the car is breathtaking. And I love the fact that after my wife took a test drive and then I unlocked the car to start driving, the car remembers my driving seat preferences and puts the seat exactly where I want it.

We are going to go on a long drive tomorrow, the place is just an excuse to take the car out. And I am hoping that it will be a lovely journey, not because I doubt the car and it's performance, but more because of the experience of getting to the place (traffic, etc.) and the stuff that we will do there.

Pictures and details coming soon to the blog.

Watch this space.

Laura Lovegood - Part II

Just heard from the car dealer...the car will be available this evening!!!

Yippeeeeeee!

So I can pick up the car this evening and the number plate will be available by tomorrow afternoon. Until then, I have to drive the car without the plates. Which should not be a problem as the car has been registered and I will get all the papers in my hand today itself.

Can't wait to get my hands on the car keys and can't wait to drive my new car.

Man, I'm so excited!

Laura Lovegood

Since we have moved back, we have been looking at buying a new car. Not that we have a problem with the old one, but that's been around for more than 8 years and is a bit cramped for us now (not that it was no cramped then...but that was all I could afford at that time). The specs this time were that the new car should have a lot more space, be more comfortable (three out of the five people in my family hover around the 6 ft mark), be powerful (my input to the list), be economical (my wife's input) and be cool (my daughter's input). Finding something which fit the bill was going to be a challenge.

Going by size, we thought we will get an SUV. Naturally, all the usual suspects were in contention. The Ford Endeavour, the Honda CRV, the Mitsubishi Pajero, the Chevy Forrester. Of these, I personally think that the CRV is a bit to cramped for my taste and definately not value-for-money. The Pajero, from all the reviews I have read, is an old version which they are hawking into the Indian market at a hefty premium. And Chevy is not exactly a great brand in India, mainly because of their support capabilities from what I have heard. So it came down to the Explorer.

When the car arrived for our test drive, I was impressed with the size of the thing. It could intimidate any vehicle on the road! The seating for the front passenger and driver are extremely comfortable. The beast has some power too. The diesel engine delivers a fair bit of punch and the car is quite manouverable in traffic. But what I didn't realize, and something that my wife pointed out to me, was that the seating for the back seats is not exactly comfortable. She was sitting in the back for most of the test drive to judge just that. As I got out of the car to check this (and by this time, I loved this car), I had trouble getting into the back seats with ease. This was going to be a BIG problem. Mainly because my mom has recently undergone a hip replacement surgery and so getting in and out of the car would be a problem for her. That nixed it.

When we got back, my daughter was all for the Endeavour as she loved the third row of seats which, she said, was just perfect for her "and her dog". We had to do a Strengths Weaknesses listing on paper as part of our evaluation. Obviously the car failed.

So one afternoon, my wife and I were just going around town doing some shopping for the house and we happened to pass the Honda showroom. I had sat in my friend's Civic and so had had that experience, but I wanted to know how the Accord feels. When we walked into the showroom, I distinctly remember feeling like the people there were pushing the Civic more than the Accord...almost like they did NOT want to sell the Accord. They did not even have a brochure for the car! So we had a looksie. We sat in the car, absorbed the marketing banter and then took the car out for a test. I was intent on the Automatic transmission (as most people in Bangalore will attest to the traffic conditions and the incessant gear changes that one has to make). The car felt quite agile and responsive...until I stepped hard on the throttle. It took almost a second for the car to upshift and rev up to go the way I wanted it to. Sure, it has a few nice things...like F1 like gear paddles to shift up and down in a semi manual mode. But overall, it felt OK. They did not have an Accord available for a test drive.

So we left the showroom and were circling back towards home when we noticed the Skoda showroom. In we went.

I was promptly shown the Skoda Superb, an Audi A6 class car which has all the trimmings that you would expect from a luxury car. It is immensely spacious, has a bunch of features and is very comfortable. Looks great too (to someone like me who likes European styling more than the Japanese look). The only problem was price...too darn expensive.

So the guy then smartly manouvered us to another car which he claimed has almost the same number of features as the Superb, but was a bunch of money less expensive. The moment I sat in the Laura, I was in love. The dashboard stole my heart! Clean, elegant and informative. They had achieved perfection. And then the guy started to talk.

The car has a bunch of features which are mindblowing. Nowadays, every car has ABS, but this one has Acceleration Skid Restrain which manages skids and slides, it has traction control (they call it the Electronic Stability Program) which makes for a smoother ride around twisty terrain, it has SIX airbag protecting the entire cabin, has an electronic tyre pressure monitor, it has a four point parking sensor which tells you exactly what is how close to the car. And this is only safety. It has another bunch of stuff that makes the spec sheet drool worthy.

And then there is the car.

We took the car for a spin (all three of us had to do it together, of course) and so the car needed to come home on a weekend for us to drive it. The moment I turned the ignition (actually, even as I just held the car key in my hand, I knew this was it), I loved the way the car behaved. Not a waggle, not a murmer, not a tremble. Commendable for a diesel.

Once on the road, the car purred along and behaved better than my small car traffic. The way it handled sharp turns and roundabouts, I was amazed at how a car of this size handled it with such grace. When stepping on the power, it roared away instantaneouly (no lag) and gave me the feeling that I was extremely under control even at extremely high speeds. The car just feels safe and solid all around.

The individual climate control was under continuous threat from my daughter (who insisted on sitting up front in "her new Girl car") as she twiddled the knobs and set the temperature until she felt comfortable. Then we opened the skyroof and just the look on her face made it all worthwhile. We had connected our iPod to the car's music system (12 speakers...more than the number in my home theater) and were happily enjoying the thump of the music system. I even tried enabling the parking system in traffic. It was so responsive that the display would light up mometarily when a bike went past us, so fast that the indicator would come on before I could see the bike come around!

As we entered the basement of our complex (to see if the car will fit in the parking space), the lights came on by themselves (I was told that the wipers would come on by themselves too if it were raining and that the sunroof would close by itself as well). The lit dashboard looked even better. We stepped out of the car to admire the lines and the Skoda guy continued badgering us with the features of the car.

Intelligent rear view mirror to cut glare, air drag coefficient of 0.30, huge boot space (my daughter actually climbed into it and sat there comfortably while we closed it!), nice little touches like lights under the side mirrors which enable stumble free access to the car, a nice sun screen to pull up to avoid the Sun scorching one's back. I can just go on and on.

So there we were. Stunned and pleased as punch with the car. So much so that we did not even feel like looking at anything else. In our mind, we had bought the car. It was only a matter of logistics before it came home.

That day, Laura Lovegood was born. Taking off from the Harry Potter character (Luna Lovegood), my daughter pounced on the fact that the car is called Laura ("so she's a girl, Pappi") and christned the car Laura Lovegood. She even got home and made the car a birth certificate. She was clever enough to leave the day of birth space blank!

So now we have been waiting for the formalities to be completed. There was a lot of running around to be done, following up with my office Finance team, the leasing company and the Skoda dealer in Bangalore. Finally I have been told that most of the formalities are done and that the car should go in for registration tomorrow. If all goes to plan, we will have our new car, the lovely Laura Lovegood, become a part of the family by tomorrow evening. Hopefully!

Until then, it's just waiting for the "World's Most Beautiful Car" (as they called it at the Italy Car Show).