more than a dozen motor vehicles have combusted on indian roads over the last two years some with deadly effect but before blaming manufacturers we need to ask ourselves if we are treating our cars the way we shouldcars going up in smoke have been hogging news space for a while now it would in fact make sense to replace cars with vehicles in the above statement as we can also add the fleet of expensive cng buses that are apparently getting hot under the hood and lighting up for no reason whatsoever the modernday automobile any of those you see on the road these days is a product designed after numerous permutations and combinations of performance safety and quality millions of manhours go into every small detail and what you see on the road is nowhere near the first draft of the sameso why do we still have these stray incidents it would be safe to say that most cars that are being sold in india have no major design flaws while a modernday automobile has a number of highly inflammable components packed into it most of them are rather well insulated and have their own dedicated space in the overall designwe have the gasoline fuel and lubricating oils working in rather extreme conditions in the engine compartment but these are designed after meticulous planning the fuel runs from the tank into the engine through highpressure secure pipes the lubricating fluids are insulated from the high temperature of the exhaust system which could potentially ignite itthe ignition and electrical system is another fire hazard but the very nature of its design accommodates safety features to ensure that in case of an incident nothing will spiral out of control with such a high degree of safety measures i believe it would be unfair to blame the automobile manufacturers entirely for these incidentsafter much thought my take on this is that most of these are issues that emanate from poor maintenance and understanding of the automobile and lack of a proper supply chain of quality parts inadequate and obsolete equipment at repair facilities only add up to a disasterthe fact that our culture is rather proud of our jugaad capabilities does not help a great deal it is yet to dawn on our populace that to get something working is nowhere close to getting it working right and this is something we tend to learn the hard way our markets have matured over the last two decades and the days of the protected indian economy are over the shopping experience has evolved and every international car maker worth its wheels is present in the indian market selling its wares at prices far higher than the international market thanks to our draconian import duties global manufacturers force the indian automobile dealer network to adhere to international norms and build extensive infrastructure even if it means eating into their profit marginseverything in this country is fine even the number of engineers