Auto, power firms taking baby steps on electric cars
Last month El on Musk announced the delivery schedule of the much-public is ed Model 3, the electric car for the masses, at $35,000(~22.4lakh) apiece.
TheTeslafounder, whohaspromised to manufacture in India, however, didnotgiveany deadline, but had tweeted that he was looking for import duty concession still the factory was putup. With or without the 60 percent duty on Model 3, the car can remain only a novelty.
Action in \India
But the launch has turned the focus once again on India’ s preparedness to shift to electric cars. Especially with the government setting an ambitious target that by 2030 all cars will be electric, which, most carmakerssay, isoverthetop and not achievable.
Thatitmightbe. Afterall, only Ma hind ra Electric Mobility has an electric vehicle running on Indian streets, but sells limited numbers. But prodded by the government there is already a lot of action ontheground. State-ownedcompanies —Power Grid Corporation, NT PC, Bharat Heavy Electric a ls Ltd( B HE L ), and Raj as than Electronics and Instruments Ltd—and a consortium led by Ma hind ra & Mahindra, Ola, andBengaluru-based Lithium Urban Technologies Ltd are putting together 400- odd electric charging stations( thereare25) inthecountry. And they are being supported by a 50-60 percent subsidy being offered by the government. One key inflection point for consumers is to ensure that they areas comfortable charging their cars as they are with refuellingnow.
The other inflection point for car owners is the price of electric cars nearly matching that of gasoline cars, making them an attractive preposition as they would save on running costs. The key barrier is the cost of the battery pack, which constitutes 30-40 percent of the cost of an electric car, and is imported and therefore expensive. To address that problem, a Suzuki-led consortium and the space agency Indian Space Research Organisation( Isro ), in collaboration with Bhel, apart from Sun Mobility( promoted byChetanMaini, who introduced electric vehicles ), have decided to provide the technology or setup manufacturing facilities. And of course car makers— Nissan, theTatas, Volvo, andMahindra Electric, andHyundai— aretakingbaby steps towards experimenting with electric cars even if it might be years before mass production.
Laying the infrastructure
To address the question of charging stations, Power Grid is doing feasibility studies of what model to follow— whether to setup ultra-fast charging stations( a car can be charged in 15 minutes) or put up more scalable and cheaper fast-charging stations( which take 90 minutes to charge the battery ). Says Sub ir Sen, chief operating officer (CT U planning and smart grid ), Power Grid :“We will have a cost-effective model. With the push towards non-fossil energy (likesolar) bythegovernment, which will be used to provide electricity in the daytime, there will be enough surplus thermal power, which can be used to power electric vehicles .”
Ultra-quick charging stations of course come at a steep price tag of ~20 lakh and they lookun viable at the moment. Mahindra-Electric, whichis working on setting up such stations, says that fast-chargers need an investment of ~3-4 la khan dare the most viable option. Critics say customers will not be comfortable if charging takes so much time. ButMaheshBabu, chiefexecutive officer of Ma hind ra Electric, has a different view of the matter and says :“We have seen that people do not use their car for travelling more than two-four hours daily, there st of the time it is in the parking lot. So there is enough time to charge it for 90 minutes as running costs are much lower than gasoline .”
Work has also started on reducing the cost of the car and undertaking work indigenous ly. Ma ru ti Suzuki Chairman RCBh ar ga va says :“There is noway you can make an electric carat less than ~5 lakh until you manufacture the battery packs in the country. And without that price point you can not have mass use of electric cars .”
He says an imported lithium ion battery, on which a car can run 140 km with its ACon, couldcostas muchas~3lakh. Butexpertssay this could be cut by half if the packs, including the cells, are made in India. And the good news is that with growing volumes, especially from China, battery pack prices globally are going down quickly.
Suzuki has taken the first step by setting up a joint venture with Toshiba and Denso to manufacture lithium ion battery packs in India with an investment of more than ~1,200 crore in Gujarat. And Isro has modified the battery it uses in satellites for electric vehicles. It has tied up with BHEL to set up a unit to manufacture them with an investment of ~100 crore. Maini's Sun Mobility is working on building smart batteries for electric cars and providing the technology to make renewable energy-based battery stations. “Our aim is to provide end-to-end mobility solutions, which are scalable and cost-competitive. We will work in partnership with original equipment manufacturers and mobility solutions providers,” says Maini, vicechairman, Sun Mobility. There are others working on developing key electric vehicle technology indigenously, which could reduce car prices further.