As writers, analogies are a staple of the trade. This is true of orators, too. You try and give an example that you believe would blow away your audience when they put two and two together. And they should then compliment you on your intelligence. But analogies do not always work. Sometimes they’re too stretched and require the reader to do some mental gymnastics. Or they’re just irrelevant to the point being made.
This brings me to Rahul Gandhi’s recent comments in Colombia involving electric vehicles (EVs). I watched the video twice and couldn’t make sense of it, like many on social media. An analogy breaks if I have to spend time thinking about it—especially if it involves a subject that just happens to be around one of my core competencies. I apologise if this seems a bit pedantic, but somebody has to bell the cat.
Let me explain why, but a quick aside. I am not trying to make a political point here, and Gandhi clearly likes riding motorcycles and travelling. Many others also do, but that does not mean that they innately understand the technical aspects. Plus, a two-wheeler isn’t a car.
What Gandhi was trying to get at is the idea that EVs have ‘decentralised’ power, as compared to an internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle. He seems to think that, as a result, EVs are better and lighter than ICE vehicles. What was really galling, though, was when he said that each wheel on an EV has an independent motor.
A central ‘brain’ in every car
It’s not the first time he has said this. In February, he had used the same analogy in a post accompanying his YouTube video on an interaction with students from Nagaland. Let me correct him: most EVs have a single motor that only drives one set of wheels. These could be the rear wheels, like in the case of the Mahindra BE6 or XEV 9e, or the front wheels, like on the Hyundai Creta Electric. You do have cars where there are two motors on the front and rear axles that power all four wheels, like on the new Tata Harrier.ev QWD.
But only the most powerful and extremely expensive EVs have four independent motors powering each wheel individually. Like the Yangwang U9, a supercar made by Chinese firm BYD that has an absolutely astounding 3,000 horsepower from the four motors, which made it the fastest-ever production vehicle when it touched a scarcely believable 496 kmph recently. Those are the exceptions, not the rule.
Here is the other funny thing: one point Gandhi made is that because each wheel is independent, power is decentralised. Have you ever dragged a stroller with a misaligned wheel? The last thing you want in a car is a wheel doing its own thing, especially at speed. So you have a central ‘brain’ in every car.
A modern car, ICE or electric, has much, much more processing power than the Saturn V rockets that took mankind to the moon. With a whole host of sensors, which can even measure minuscule differences in traction, adjustments can be made without the driver or passengers even feeling them. Even an entry-level hatchback now has dozens of sensors that sense if a car is losing grip and adjust power accordingly.
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ABS system
Take anti-lock brakes (ABS) for example, the system is present on virtually every car, and soon we’ll see it on every two-wheeler in India. Sensors tell the car’s ‘brain’ that a wheel is locking up during braking, which then releases brake pressure on that wheel. I learnt to drive in an era without ABS, where one was taught not to brake while turning, as the differential braking on the inner and outer wheels might lead to a slide. Well, someone learning to drive today will not even be taught that, because the ‘central’ brain would handle it.
You can see this on display when you go extreme off-roading, like I did recently during the G-Class Experience. In some situations, the G Wagon would ‘dog leg’, that is to say, have one wheel up in the air. And the traction sensors would realise that a wheel is spinning, and the central brain would lock that wheel.
Not to belabour the point I’m trying to make here. But modern cars are far from being examples of decentralisation. In fact, they’re examples of the exact opposite, central command and control. Automated control, yes, but centralised. So, Mr Gandhi, please stop with the automotive analogies. They’re not just bad, but also wrong.
Kushan Mitra is an automotive journalist based in New Delhi. He tweets @kushanmitra. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)