E-RICKSHAW REVOLUTION
India is witnessing a boom in electric rickshaws. While these must transition to safer products, their bigger sibling— the electric auto— needs a leg-up with better charging infrastructure
OOver a decade ago, New Delhi welcomed battery-operated e-rickshaws ahead of the 2010 Commonwealth Games as an eco-friendly alternative for mobility in a city battling air pollution. Since then, these low-speed three-wheelers, which ferry passengers over short distances for as little as Rs 10, have become ubiquitous, not just in Delhi but across the entire swathe of north India up to Assam in the east.
In 2022, e-rickshaws notched up a milestone of sorts—for the first time, they outsold the regular autorickshaws with internal combustion engines (ICE) running on fuels like CNG and LPG. According to data from the Federation of Automobile
Dealers Associations (FADA), 294,000 e-rickshaws were sold last year as against 246,000 ICE autorickshaws. Driving this surge is the need for last-mile connectivity that has now gone beyond the big cities and into tier 2 and 3 towns, says Sudip Banerjee, the head of strategy and planning at the Delhi-based Saera Electric Auto, one of the earliest manufacturers of e-rickshaws in India. “Post-Covid, there has been a boom,” he says. Riding this boom is a whole ecosystem of manufacturers, fleet operators, finance companies and start-ups. With e-rickshaws leading the charge, the three-wheeler industry—for long the workhorse of urban and rural mobility—is getting an electric makeover.
It’s playing out in several ways. The basic e-rickshaws, modelled on the old cycle-rickshaws, run on lead-acid batteries. Up until January 2015, when the Union government brought e-rickshaws under the Motor Vehicles Act via an amendment, they had been operating in a grey area. “It was not mainstream even five years ago,” says Pulkit Khurana, co-founder of the Delhi-based Battery Smart, which operates a Lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery-swapping network. But after they were legalised—which meant they could be registered with number plates like other vehicles—the e-rickshaws began to proliferate. There are over 400
e-rickshaw manufacturers registered on the Vaahan database of the Union ministry of road transport & highways—many of them assemble these vehicles after procuring components. While an exact count of these vehicles isn’t available, e-rickshaws are estimated to account for over 90 per cent of the roughly 8,50,000 electric three-wheelers registered in India in the five years since 2018. The cost has been the crucial factor driving sales—an e-rickshaw can be bought for around Rs 1.20 lakh-Rs 1.30 lakh, half of what a regular autorickshaw is priced at. Bringing them into the regulatory ambit meant that auto-financing companies also opened up to e-rickshaw purchases. Now, these vehicles are a firm presence across northern cities—in the National Capital Region, for instance, e-rickshaws provide vital last-mile connectivity at the Delhi Metro stations.
“These are the biggest population of electric vehicles right now. So, that’s a big opportunity for us,” says Khurana, pointing out that the lead acid batteries, which need to be replaced every six months, were not designed for electric vehicles. Hence, Battery Smart, founded in 2020, is building a business model of offering e-rickshaws Li-ion batteries that can be exchanged on the go at swap centres whenever a battery pack runs out of juice. “Lead-acid has a host of problems. It can only run 60-70 km in a day and you need to replace them every 6-9 months,” says Khurana, whose start-up does battery swaps for 15,000 e-rickshaws every day across 15 cities.
“When it comes to electric vehicles, three-wheelers are a low-hanging fruit,” points out Sulajja Firodia Motwani, founder and CEO of Pune-based Kinetic Green. The market, she says, is at a cusp, but there are also issues holding it back. Broadly, there are two types of vehicles: one is the basic, almost jugaad-type, e-rickshaw running on lead-acid batteries with speeds under 25 km/hour which falls in an industry category called L3. But this is a largely unregulated market—many vehicles on the roads are still unregistered—over which several concerns, including safety, have been raised. Besides, these are not allowed in some cities—for example in Bengaluru, where local traffic authorities fear that congestion will only worsen with the low-powered vehicles.
Then, there are electric autorickshaws, which look just like regular ICE autos with an integrated windshield, except that they are powered by Li-ion batteries and are capable of higher speeds—these are classified as L5. While the L3 e-rickshaws are a big success, the L5 is still at a nascent stage— last year, 24,174 electric autorickshaws (both passenger and cargo) were sold across the country as against 7,508 in 2021, according to FADA data. The popularity of e-rickshaws shows there is a requirement for good, last-mile connectivity using electric three-wheelers, says Motwani, whose firm makes both e-rickshaws and electric autos. “It’s just that we have to transition these to better quality products that will be safer and will last longer.”
Under Phase II of the government’s scheme for Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Hybrid & Electric Vehicles in India (FAME-II), both e-rickshaws and electric autorickshaws are eligible for subsidies of Rs 10,000 per kilowatt hour (KWh) provided they use advanced Li-ion batteries with warranties, adhere to safety standards and meet the make-in-India parameters. Recently, representatives from the three-wheeler industry urged the government to enhance the subsidy to Rs 15,000 per KWh—as was done for two-wheelers in June 2021—so that the price gaps will narrow, says Motwani, who is also the co-chairperson of the Electric Vehicle Task Force at the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI). “After the government increased the slab, two-wheeler sales have gone through the roof,” she points out, adding that it will have a similar effect by reducing the cost difference between ICE vehicles and electric three-wheelers and the price gap in L3 between lead acid and Li-ion.
“The Lithium battery vehicle is what the government is now promoting,” says
THESE ARE THE BIGGEST POPULATION OF ELECTRIC VEHICLES RIGHT NOW. IT WAS NOT MAINSTREAM EVEN FIVE YEARS AGO. SO, THAT’S A LARGE OPPORTUNITY FOR US” -PULKIT KHURANA
Co-founder, Battery Smart, Delhi