Govt’s planned policy push for electric vehicles is a good one; but will see a lot of speed breakers

FP|April 26,2017 Everyone today wants a bigger battery or a longer lasting one in their smartphones. It is this battery anxiety that forces many to go in for a smartphone, with a larger capacity battery. Gone are the days where only power users demanded battery life, even Snapchatters and Pokémon Go users are seen lugging around battery packs. It’s this battery anxiety, the feeling of helplessness that forces many to curl and bend into choosing one device over another because we simply do not want to be left powerless at the end of a long work day. And it is this same feeling that’s currently keeping many away from electric cars these days. Specifically in India. Call it range anxiety, but the feeling of being left stranded on a road is not a good one and will quickly diminish all those electric car dreams, no matter how fast they go or how fancy they are. In short, everyone wants a dependable car. In India, this dependency is fuelled by the tens of thousands of fuel stations, across states, across the country. And this is exactly an area of concern that would make an electric car owner shudder when he or she dreams up those long road trips. While customers concerned about the environment will still choose a hybrid over an electric car, the government seems to have other plans as detailed by an unnamed official, put out in article by the Economic Times. Big Plans The article states that government has finalised plans for a rather ambitious programme which has just one definitive goal – to power most of the vehicles in India using battery power only by 2030. While the plan is not far fetched and has been discussed before, it’s the detail as to how the government will go about implementing it that may get vehicle owners concerned if not shocked. The new scheme which has been finalised on, with inputs from manufacturers, ministry of road transport, power, petroleum and many more, includes limited tax break for manufacturers and the sale of electric vehicles without a battery inside. An Electric car with no battery? Why would you buy an electric car without its only source of power inside? Well, you will, because it will cost you less. This is because almost 40 percent of an electric vehicle’s price is taken up by the cost of the battery inside. The government’s ambitious plan to go green by 2030 includes the leasing of batteries of commercial electric vehicles, much like Renault has done with it Zoe plugin electric. This brings down the price of the electric vehicles, (which are by default expensive to produce in limited quantities for limited buyers) and the customer will not need to worry about battery replacements, which turns out to be a rather expensive affair when the battery begins to fail after regular use. [caption id="attachment_140249" align="alignnone" width="640"] An electric car chassis the battery takes up the major portion.[/caption] But it takes this leasing business a step further. As per the policy according to the unnamed official, two-wheelers, three-wheelers and non-air-conditioned city buses will be sold (read: forced to) to buyers without batteries as part of the plan. This is part of phase one, which consists of public transport vehicles. Batteries will be leased at a specific cost and can reportedly be swapped in 2 – 10 minutes when they run out of charge much like Tesla’s battery swap program. As for taxis, the government is considering fast charging electric stations. The hot Indian summers will not be in your favour when the plan goes live as this only applies to non-AC vehicles and will not work for AC cars and AC buses (talk about going back to the sweaty 90s).