Preference for e-Mobility

What is the issue?

Automobile industries has weaker road map for the transition to cleaner fuel, an integrated e-mobility plan will resolve this.

What is the need for e-Mobility plans?

India has many unique reasons for a faster adoption of electric vehicles.
India’s vehicle ownership is still minuscule, particularly on count of cars.
In Delhi, for instance, it is estimated that roughly 21 per cent people own cars and some 40 per cent own motorcycles.
The 2011 Census found that roughly 10 per cent of urban Indians owned a car.
All in all, a large section is yet to move to vehicle ownership, so it can motorise differently.

Can E-vehicles really eliminate air pollution?

In the rest of the motorised world, e-vehicles are finding it difficult to compete with cleaner and much more fuel-efficient modern cars.
E-vehicles make use of coal or even natural gas in power plants, and it will displace carbon dioxide generation but not replace it.
There will still be pollution, but it will no longer come from the tail-pipe of a car, but the smokestack of a power plant.
But e-vehicles provide solutions to local air pollution and will also reduce the fuel import bill, which is desperately need.

What is the government’s move on e-mobility?

With an aim to promote eco-friendly vehicles, the government had launched the Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Hybrid and Electric vehicles in India (FAME India) scheme in 2015.

Phase I-It offered incentives on electric and hybrid vehicles of up to Rs 29,000 for bikes and Rs 1.38 lakh for cars.
But the incentive scheme turned to be chaoticand pushed mild diesel-hybrid cars in the name of achieving up numbers in electro-mobility.
As much as 60 per cent of the FAME incentives had been cornered by private cars that were neither electric nor strong hybrids.
Phase II -Because of this government revised FAME programme such that it will not incentivise mild hybrids.
It also laysthrust on electric-buses, which have the big potential to change not just vehicles, but on e-mobility.

What are the possibilities with e-mobility?

Most Indians do not drive personal vehicles, thus the opportunity is to think big on e-mobility options.
Combination of the programmes for both clean vehicles and public transport vehicles will help in e-mobility.
Fleets of buses running on dedicated e-wired highways can be introduced so that they can be charged on the move or at dedicated points.
This combined e-mobility for last-mile connectivity, will change life on the move, for the better.

Source: Business Standard