India drives past China in electric vehicle race
LONDON/NEWDELHI: An electricvehicle revolution is gaining ground in India, and it has nothing to do with cars.
The South Asian nation is home to about 1.5 million battery-powered, three-wheeled rickshaws—a fleet bigger than the total number of electric passenger cars sold in China since 2011. But while the world’s largest auto market dangled significant subsidies to encourage purchases of battery-powered cars, India’s e-movement hardly got a hand from the state.
Rather, drivers of the ubiquitous three-wheelers weaving through crowded, smoggy streets discovered that e-rickshaws are quieter, faster, cleaner and cheaper to maintain than a traditional auto rickshaw. They also are less strenuous than cycle rickshaws, which require all-day peddling. So with more rides possible in a day, the e-rickshaws are proving more lucrative.
As many as 11,000 new e-rickshaws hit the streets every month, and annual sales are expected to increase about 9% by 2021, according to Rahul Mishra, a principal at consulting firm A.T. Kearney. Three-wheeled vehicles make up a $1.5 billion market, and manufacturers of electric versions include Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. and Kinetic Engineering Ltd., along with smaller outfits that assemble parts imported from China.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime, transformational opportunity that we’re looking at,’’ said Goldie Srivastava, chief executive officer and co-founder of Smarte, an Uber-style app using 800-plus e-rickshaws around New Delhi.
India’s dominant ride-hailing startup, Ola, plans to place 10,000 e-ricks in its service by next April. India is the world’s fourth-largest auto market, but previous attempts to boost private electric-car ownership flopped. The government likely scaled back because it fears disrupting an industry that contributes about 7% of the total gross domestic product, according to a Bloomberg NEF report in March.unlike the estimated 1.35 million passenger EVS cruising around China, the number of electric cars plying Indian roads is a paltry 6,000, according to BNEF data. Chinese automakers sell more than that in three days.