35% of all the cars sold in 2040 will be EVs
Indian city of Nagpur has become the EV capital of India with 200 Electric vehicles being launched by Ola cabs. The city which is home to India’s transport minister Nitin Gadkari has given a whole host of concessions in the forms of taxes, duties etc. to attract the EV fleet for the first time in India. Ola which is backed by Softbank has bankrolled the fleet of electric vehicles which consists of a mix of electric cars from Mahindra, bikes by Kinetic etc. These will be used by Ola to power its taxi fleet in the city.
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Besides these 200 electric vehicles, Ola is also rolling out 50 EV charging points in the city to help keep the fleet rolling as the EV range is still around 200-300 kms at best. A large network of EV charging points is critical for the rollout of the EV program in the country. This pilot is a good start in my view as it is more of a PPP model in which both the government and the private sector contribute capital and other resources to kickstart a new technology.
Also, read the List Of Places Where You Can Charge Your Electric Vehicle For Free In Delhi
India is way behind in the EV industry compared to other large countries such as China, Japan and USA which are selling hundreds of thousands of electric vehicles a year and have built an enviable network of charging points. Note a number of other companies such as Hero, NTPC, Powergrid are also looking at getting into the EV industry actively.
EVs are predicted to become competitive with normal cars by 2022 and as per a Bloomberg analysis, 35% of all the cars sold in 2040 globally will be electric vehicles. India might see the car aggregator companies like Ola and Uber take the lead in the EV space, given that the Indian transportation industry is seeing a paradigm change with the sharing industry coming into the forefront. It might make sense for India to jump the whole car owning phase and directly move to the sharing EV phase. With autonomous vehicles coming into play over the next 5-10 years as well, India might not take the massive car owning route taken by the developed countries. This will not only save India massive resources but also lead to a huge cut in the overall greenhouse gas emissions
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foreign investors such as TESLA are still reluctant to invest in india for EV’s. as such there isn’t much of a market yet but a great potencial in future especially in as you pointed out sharing EV’s.currently the country being second highest carbon polluter after CHINA and it’s only going to increase, we need to promote green transport now more than ever.