"Why does a motorcycle weigh 100 kilos and a car weighs 3,000 (kilos)?" Congress Rahul Gandhi, who is also the Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha, posed this question to his audience during an event at the EIA University in Medellin, Colombia.

"Why does a motorcycle weigh 100 kilos and a car weighs 3,000 (kilos)?" Congress MP Rahul Gandhi posed this interesting question, as he interacted with a group of students at the EIA University in Medellin city of Colombia. However, his car-bike analogy drew criticism from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which wondered why Gandhi is invited by universities when Congress has many learned leaders such as Shashi Tharoor and Manish Tewari. 

"To carry one passenger, you need 3,000 kilos of metal in a car if one passenger is driving a car. And a motorcycle has 100 kilos, carries two passengers. So why is a motorcycle able to carry two passengers with 150 kilos of metal and a car needs 3,000?" asked Gandhi during his interaction. 

As per Gandhi, who is the Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha, his question lies at the centre of the transition to electric vehicles from those running on conventional fuel. When someone from the audience tried to answer him, he reiterated his revolves around why a car needs "3,000 kilos of metal".

"The answer is it's the engine, because it's the engine that kills you on impact. Right? And the motorcycle is light because the engine disappears from you when you have an accident. Right?" Gandhi said.

"In a motorcycle, when you have an impact, the engine is separated from you. So the engine doesn't hurt you. Whereas in a car, when you have an impact, the engine comes into the car. So the entire car is designed to stop the engine from killing you," Gandhi explained, adding "The electric motor breaks that centralised energy system."

Gandhi's car-bike analogy draws BJP's ire

Gandhi's car-bike analogy gave an opportunity to the BJP to attack the Congress leader, with the saffron party saying if anyone had any doubts about the Lok Sabha LoP's knowledge, then they would have got erased after listening to this. 

"From Harley-Davidson to Toyota and from Volkswagen to Ford, mechanical engineers must be beating their chests after listening to an amazing engineering gyan that he gave," said BJP MP and national spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi at a press conference on Friday.

"In his video, Rahul Gandhi incorrectly equated decentralisation in four-wheel drive vehicles with two-wheelers, falsely explaining engine separation during an accident and equating it with components connected through bolts," he added.

Trivedi said it is as if Gandhi believes that everything in India will fall apart in a similar manner, quipping such a person, "possessing this so-called extraordinary knowledge", is invited from the Congress by various universities to speak.

"There are many people (in the Congress) who are experts in their subjects, including his (Rahul Gandhi's) uncle Sam Pitroda, who permanently lives abroad and has an image of an intellectual," Trivedi added.

(With inputs from PTI)