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Friday , 29 March 2024

SHIFTING GEARS: Electric Vehicle revolution in India

Another challenge is the absence of electric charging infrastructure. Customers are reluctant to take on an EV with the uncertainty of being able to re-charge the batteries.

With ‘One Tata’ approach, Tata Motors collaborates with other Tata Group companies to provide a turnkey solution with respect to vehicles, charging infrastructure, maintenance services and financial assistance for procurement and functioning of the EVs. Tata Motors recently partnered with Volercars, a leading mobility solutions company that will be delivering this integrated solution with value added services to Cognizant including on ground operations & fleet management for their Hyderabad campus.

“With our understanding of the technology and customer requirements, we have bagged the order for Tigor EV, which we are supplying to EESL currently. We have also provided EVs to a few State governments. In the Commercial vehicle category, we successfully participated in the EV bus tendering process and have won orders from six cities.

Earlier this year, Tata motors displayed an extended range of six EV products enabling personal and mass mobility which will has smart connections. They will interact with cities through WiFi and connect to city services.

To capture the opportunities arising out of new mobility trends and to bring organizational focus and alignment, they established a new Electric Mobility vertical this year. The business vertical will enable Tata Motors to deliver on its aspiration of providing innovative & competitive e-mobility solutions.

“We will drive Tata Motors’ vision of proactively developing the e-Mobility ecosystem in the country and leveraging this new opportunity for the ‘One Tata’ group with our capability to offer a complete turnkey solution for companies, shared-mobility providers, government agencies and others to address infrastructure and cost issues.”

Toyota has been at the forefront of pioneering advanced technologies which are towards solving national issues in the countries, they operate in. A source from Toyota Kirloskar Motor, said “We would like to offer solutions which are beneficial to the consumers and solve such national issues as safety, carbon emissions and fuel import. It is important to remain technology agnostic with alternate fuel driven mobility. Finally, which technology succeeds depends on many factors in the market place and we would be ready with our solutions to meet customer expectations.

Toyota Kirlsokar Motor is perhaps the first OEM to bring Hybrid Electric Vehicles [HEVs] to India. In Toyota’s vision of mobility 2050, all electrified vehicle technologies [xEVs] will remain relevant where EV would cover short distance commute, while HEV/PHV includes passenger cars and FCVs would be for buses/trucks. As of May 2018, globally, Toyota has sold more than 12 million electrified vehicles contributing to 90 million tons of Co2 reduction.

Lower taxes will help faster adoption of electrification by gradually eliminating ICE [Internal Combustion Engine] over the period & improve customer acceptance in a phased manner. Such energy saving & environment protection criteria should eventually become the basis for taxation.”

Pune based Frugal Innovations Pvt Ltd retrofits petrol and diesel based vehicles into electric vehicle, Mahesh Kulkarni, Director, Frugal Innovations Pvt Ltd, said, “EVs are energy efficient when compared to fossil fuel driven vehicles primarily due to the energy recovered during braking and practically require no maintenance. EVs help in combating climate change which is the need of the hour. Further EVs help in reducing import of crude oil and thus conserve foreign exchange.”

Globally automobile manufacturers have developed or are developing an electric version of their existing models. Many countries have committed themselves to all electric vehicles by 2030. This will have a ripple effect in other industry sectors such as power, renewables, battery etc. Kulkarni said, “As a company we are committed to implementing the Government vision of all electric vehicles by 2030 by way of providing charging infrastructure to support quick charging and through developing low cost, low size and fast charging batteries.”

Essentially, the Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of (Hybrid &) Electric Vehicles (FAME) scheme has been instituted to encourage buyers to buy electric vehicles over traditional fuel-based cars. The scheme aims to provide a major push for the early adoption and market creation of both hybrid and electric technologies vehicles in the country.

FAME India aims to help the country’s EV market achieve selfsufficient economies of scale by 2020 through demand incentives, in-house technology development, and domestic production. In keeping with this goal, the Indian government has been offering substantial discounts and subsidies to both auto manufacturers and vehicle owners in the country. FAME has four main focuses — technology development, demand creation, pilot projects and charging infrastructure.

The scheme is applicable to all Indian cities and towns including Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, and others with more than one million population. It applies to all electric vehicle segments i.e. two, three, and fourwheelers, cars, light commercial vehicles (LCVs), buses, etc.

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