Real Green Cars: Now, Tata Motors has stepped out of box with its life-cycle assessment

A validation by the board or a buy-in from senior management is what every sustainability professional dreams of as he or she helps craft a sustainability framework for the company. It was, therefore, with some trepidation that Abhay Pathak set about making a presentation to a Tata Motors' board committee with celebrated scientist Raghunath Mashelkar as chair. Pathak, the Sustainability Lead at the company's Engineering Research Centre (ERC) in Pune, presented the hotspots on the life-cycle assessment (LCA) of the Nano car, the fi rst ever cradle-to-grave analysis of an entire vehicle by Tata Motors, nay the Indian automobile industry. Usually, the environmental impact of a vehicle is...