No Roads for Electric Vehicles in India?

India's migration to Electric Vehicles by 2030.... Plausible?

A list of reasons why India's migration to 'Only-EV' sales by 2030 is a herculean ask, task, cask!

Forget On-Road Price, Charging Points/Electric Grid Sophistication, or Better Graded Fuel. There is a bigger and more basic concern for Electric Vehicles to storm the roads. And that reason precisely could be that there would be no roads for electric vehicles.

Image Sourced from this Business World article on NITI Aayog's EV dream! vision!

The Tesla Tax

A few weeks back Norway did this. With the minority government there mulling (albeit forcefully) over the scope and extent of benefits given to EVs (read Tesla). Hefty benefits that included subsidies in taxes, vehicle parking fees, and road tolls.

And now have taken a U Turn, which was expected given the vociferous protests from environmental groups. And seemingly for good and sound reason given that: -

EVs cut carbon footprint substantially and Norway draws 99%+ of its power from hydroelectric sources!

The NITI Aayog Dream!

The Indian government's policy think-tank NITI Aayog had released a document that demands hours of poring over fact sheets.

One thing that caught my attention was one of the original reasons/excuses behind proposing the Tesla tax - that EVs are inherently heavier (thanks to the batteries) and that the rich to super rich who were benefiting from the Norwegian government's subsidies on EVs had a responsibility toward the upkeep of public roads. Now, I knew that,

2. We do not have the ideal/bare minimum fuel quality to even move to BS VI
3. We do not have the ideal electric grid to support this 2030 dream
4. Way too many dependents on the automotive industry as an employer
5. And last but probably the primary reason being the prohibitive costs involved & the winner is-

#1
Indian roads will need to scale up in quality on a war footing to come anywhere near to realizing the 2030 All-EV plan!

Why 2030 seems too early?

Simply because,

Past behavior is the best predictor for future behavior"- (Is one of those quotes which is attributed to a lot of sources, so apologies to the soul who actually came up with this.)

This might be a tad harsh and a pessimistic point of view. But when one of the world's most advanced and environment sensitive societies wants to revisit its EV policy! Where do we fare?

What we could do?

Apart from,

• Drafting a policy that involves all stakeholders,
• Taking stock of the used vehicle market that runs amok currently,
• Incentivize academia to impart commercial and environmental viability to bio-fuels and battery technology!

"The entire engineering ecosystem needs to pull their weight and contribute toward a paradigm shift in the way they manufacture automobiles"

The Industry Needs to Emulate Volvo from half a century back!

Volvo practically gave away their invention (Last two paras in the History section) for the industry to
save and protect millions of lives.

It is high time the principal players in the industry emulate the Swedish automaker. And not just in buying motors and batteries from one another, but where they take a bold step ahead and share knowledge, information, and data!