Is maneuvering on EV’s rollout a boon or a bane on Indian socio-economy

Keeping the pace with modernization especially in the automobile industry, the Indian government is looking for electrifying the nations automobile fleet (with reference to Electricity Act,2003) in next two decades which appears to be an offshoot of two compelling reasons namely increasing local air pollution and the increasing cost of fossil fuel. 

In the past, the EV market in India was about 25,000 units at the end of 2016-17.Of the total number of  EV’s sold, nearly 92% were two-wheelers ,while electric cars and four-wheelers accounted for less than 8% of total sales according to the SMEV (Society of Manufacturers of the Electric Vehicles).

Presently, in the conventional automobile industry, everyone vehemently supports the fact that the automobile fleet is improving the existing models day in and day out. This improvement has been the biggest boost to India’s economy by making the cars more consumer friendly and by the lap of enhanced luxury designs. Nevertheless, the bane is that the automobile field is overlooking the fact of the designs of the engines ,which are still based on conventional sources of energy namely Diesel and Petrol.So ,the only main proposal and agenda should be EV’s and uplifting the major fact of regenerating these above focused non-conventional sources of clean energy.

Moreover, India has a vast potential for the production of electricity . The pivotal aspect of the chief production will be solar power, wind power, biomass and electric energy. Keeping in mind the vast potential of  power production in India along with the National Electric Mobility Mission Plan, India is now on a scale of 62.84 Gigawatt (having achieved 36% of target) in renewable sources and is aiming for 175 Gigawatt by the year 2022. 

The result of government plan would help setting a target of increasing the number of EV’s sale up to 4% of new vehicle over five years starting from 2018-19 and also assist in aligning E-mobility solutions because India is on way for surplus electric power generation & that will create a bond further supporting the optionalities like home-charging-solutions (as suggested by Elon Musk) and use of DMRC’S (Delhi Metro Rail Corp Ltd) methodical inverter systems to regenerate more electricity than they currently consume. In layman’s language, all efforts should be to eliminate the greenhouse emissions and decreasing dependency on petrol and diesel in long run.

While work on EV’s did help in energy efficiency enhancement and emission reduction but lacked overall government and industry push to increase sales of EV models in absolute terms which led to increasing in total number of vehicles on the road (more conventional car sales), contrary to desired growth of EV’s only. This was a major setback in EV’s sales growth and actually got replaced by ‘customized hybrid model’ growth. In absolute terms instead of EV’s sale ,hybrid and conventional sales happened more often.

Coming into today’s world, India has some of the examples about the hybrid electric cars because of the initiatives were taken by the society of manufacturers of the EV’s. Today the models of hybrid cars are getting prominence day by day as the result their sale was shown up more than EV’s. Automobiles industry was attuned to move from conventional model to hybrid customization and then following the pace with the sales in the market to move towards  EV’s. This brings the point whether we are focused enough to shift fully to EV ’s?

What India needs, is to motivate the industry’s behavior towards driving the production towards EV and which should be aligned with governments to move to have more dependence on renewable power.

What a boon EV’s bring to forefront can’t be undermined and let’s see that from few EV models that are present. EV cars like Mahindra e2oPlus, Mahindra e-Verito, Tata Tigor Electric, Mahindra e-KUV 100, Tata Tiago Electric reduce the emissions that contribute to climate change and smog, improving public health and reducing ecological damage. 

As a user, deciding whether a hybrid or an electric car involves plenty of aspects one of the major ones is that you have to look for the resources in your locality that can help you to maintain and sustain the car. Depending on the type of the car you may also have the need to purchase mechanics.It rests within you and your decision.

To Conclude, keeping all the above factors in mind, as the government has initially decided to promote only electric vehicles to reduce pollution levels. It has also proposed to shift all public transport and 30% of private vehicles to electric by 2030. The future of EV’s is bright and seems to be the only respite to save the degradation of the environment, reduce pollution and reduce the greenhouse effect.

In order to reshape the world’s most complex and integrated manufacturing operation upon which many building blocks of modern society and consumer dependency rests.The result is going to be that humanity will achieve a sustainable transport future.

Said by Elon Musk