I used to live next to some folk who would drive 300 metres to the gym

I used to walk 500m round trip to nearby restaurant for lunch, everyone i met will comment on how far that is. Of course, i take it to heart and now drive my 4x4 there.

Nah just kidding, i now ride a bike, often 3.5km round trip for lunch.

People will go very far to show others their status

for one this severely depends on when it was built, old cars basically just convert 90% of the fuel into air pollution and spew it straight out the exhaust pipe, while modern cars actually use the fuel to go forward and provided the catalytic converter is in good shape they filter out some of the nastiness.

Every 35000 km or 21000 miles a gasoline car going on average 20km/l or 47mpg have produced the same amount of CO2 that it takes to make an electric car.

So if over the lifetime of the car you go less than 35000km you shouldn't be changing it with an electric. Otherwise please do 😁

Isn't it true that once a car is built, it's basically better for the environment to drive it until its wheels fall off instead of scrapping it

In terms of global warming; maybe. It depends on many factors when looking at a specific case. Another commenter already put some numbers together.

The environment, however, in this case is Dehli, a city with terrible air quality. Removing an active source of CO2, NOx, heavy metals, etc is good for that environment. Especially human lungs.

The break even on carbon emissions from manufacture vs. daily use is somewhere between around 3 and 10 years. Big trucks on the low end.

Sounds like how the EU is usually doing this. Limit the companies, not the people directly.

On the streets of New Delhi this will probably take just as long as walking. Need the AC though.

The has got to be an alternate route that is nicer than that, that's wild.

But I get that sone areas are incredibly car centric and leave you little choice.

Government-mandated to reduce emissions?

On the surface, yes. In reality they're just offloading environmental responsibility on to citizens (and making them buy "better" ICE cars so the auto industry gets the profits) instead of improving and expanding public transit to make it easier to get around without a car.

Whoa! Cool it.

The mandate isn't from "government". Apparently, the government failed to do much about pollution, so a regulatory body was set up by the courts, which body did some good things (ban diesels) but also some hamhanded things like judge only based on technology age rather than the odometer. Throwing away a ton of steel and manufacturing that has had minimal utilization isn't going to help any.

You should've dissed the people who made scrapping the dedicated bus lane an election issue some years ago. I guess that never made it to the newspapers, and hence wasn't discussed online either.

Certainly seems so. From the picture the OOP posted, it doesn't look like there's paved walkways

That's a fair point actually. I'll change it