In focus: Electric Vehicle Switch in India

In focus: Electric Vehicle Switch in India

• Earlier in June 2019, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways announced the intention to completely switch to electric vehicles only in 2-wheeler and 3-wheeler segment in 4-6 years.
• The pending notification is seeking to propose sale of only electric vehicles in the
  • 2-wheeler segment under 150cc from April 2025
  • 3-wheeler segment from April 2023
• Now, the NITI Aayog has proposed that after 2030, only electric vehicles should be sold in the country.

 

Complete Switch to EV: A Niti Aayog Roadmap

• The Niti Aayog has now proposed a roadmap to complete switch to electric vehicles 2030 onwards.
• Towards this, the Aayog has moved a Cabinet note seeking to fix responsibility for different ministries.
• The roadmap includes a 360-degree approach with focus on
• Phasing out gasoline vehicles
• Giga-scale battery manufacturing
• Upscaling charging infrastructure
• e-highways programme

Impact of Electric Vehicle switch

• According to Niti Aayog, about 64% of road transport related energy demand can be reduced.
• This will reduce 37% of carbon emissions in 2030.
• In turn, it reduces about 150 Million Tonne of gasoline consumption saving up about Rs 4 Lakh Crore in 2030 at present oil prices.

 

The Roadmap

Phasing out Gasoline Vehicles

• The Ministry for Road transport and highways shall prepare a framework to phase out the sale of diesel and petrol vehicles by 2030.
• The Ministry will also issue notification to radio cab services, such as Ola and Uber, to convert 40% of its fleet to EVs by 2026.
• National E-Mobility Missions: Ministry of Heavy Industries will be responsible for complete replacement of all gasoline vehicles with EVs of all central ministries, agencies and public sector by 2030.

Niti’s proposals to set up Giga-scale battery manufacturing

• The plan is manufacture at least 50 Gigawatt hour batteries by 2030.
• In a push to battery manufacturing, government may extend financial incentives to manufacturers including subsidies worth Rs.8000 Crores every year.
• Cash subsidy of Rs.2000 per Kwh of battery manufactured may be provided after the actual sale of the battery, with a ceiling limit for cash subsidy set at 20 GWh per firm.
• In order to avail subsidy, every company would be required to meet a target of at least 5 GWh batteries manufacturing in five years.

E-Highway Programme

• On the line of e-highways in Sweden and Germany, India will have a pilot e-highways programme.
• Under the programme, select National highways will be converted to E-highways.
• E-Highways are highways with an overhead electricity network to let hybrid trucks and buses ply on the highways as pure EVs using pantographs similar to trains.
• Once off the e-highways, they can function as hybrid vehicles.

 

 

Basics: Need to migrate to EV

• Though batteries deliver 340 rimes less energy than gasoline, the battery-run vehicles have an efficiency of nearly 85% compared to 20% of gasoline-run engines.
• This means 85% energy can be used to run the wheels and only 15% is lost as heat.
• Whereas in a gasoline engine, only 20% energy of gasoline makes it to the wheels; the remaining 80% is lost as heat.

 

Challenges

Limitations of Li-ion batteries

• The complete fleet of EVs currently is run on LiBs which poses a major challenge for switch to EVs
• LiBs are expensive.
• They are not suitable for long-distance travel.
• The LiBs used in EVs are about 500 Kgs and makes up for bulk of the weight of the cars.
• LiBs use lithium, cobalt, nickel and manganese which are in short supply in the world restricted to Bolivia, Chile.

 

Other challenges

• Charging infrastructure
• Battery recycling
• For this government has proposed battery swapping stations
• Besides EVs have lesser number of moving parts (about 20 compared to 2000 in gasoline vehicles) in them as compared to gasoline vehicles.
• This is because of constant torque generated at all speeds.
• As a result the transmission system, gearbox, clutch etc are not needed.
• This results in loss of jobs in the MSME sector in India which produces many of these auto parts.

 

Other steps taken by government

• Under National Electric Mobility Mission Plan launched in 2013, the government targeted to get at least six to seven million electric vehicles on the road by 2020.
• Further, in a bid to go green, the government planned to go all-electric in terms of new car sales in the country by the year 2030. However, recently this target was reduced to 30%.

Revised National E-mobility Programme

• Under National E-mobility Programme, the Ministry of Heavy Industries recently gave its approval to the introduction of EV-based public transportation systems in 11 cities across the country.
• National E-mobility Programme aims to provide an impetus to the entire e-mobility ecosystem that includes electric vehicle manufacturers, charging infrastructure development companies, fleet operators, service providers, etc.
• Under this programme, the Government targets to have 30% of vehicles in India as electric vehicles.
• State-run Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL) is responsible for procuring electric vehicles for the Government.

FAME Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of (Hybrid &) Electric Vehicles in India

• Government of India notified FAME India Scheme in 2015, with the objective to support hybrid/electric vehicles market development and Manufacturing eco-system
• The scheme has 4 focus areas
• Technology development
• Demand Creation
• Pilot Projects
• Charging Infrastructure