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