From CNG queues to EVs—how energy crunch can reshape India’s automotive market |
Opinion National Interest PoV 50-Word Edit
ThePrint On Camera Videos In Pictures
Society & Culture Around Town Book Excerpts Vigyapanti The Dating Story
More Judiciary Education YourTurn Work With Us Campus Voice
Opinion National Interest PoV 50-Word Edit
ThePrint On Camera Videos In Pictures
Society & Culture Around Town Book Excerpts Vigyapanti The Dating Story
More Judiciary Education YourTurn Work With Us Campus Voice
From CNG queues to EVs—how energy crunch can reshape India’s automotive market
Iran war-driven gas shortages can do what policies could not—push India toward EVs.
During a rather animated debate with an automotive industry executive over drinks, he postulated a theory. Like many others, he too spent his summer holidays in Kolkata in the 1980s, when one constant feature of a rapidly deindustrialising West Bengal was routine loadshedding. For hours, there was no electricity.
The scenario was not particular to Kolkata, but to the entire India. And, anyone who could afford it had inverters at their homes. By the 1990s, many homes in Delhi’s posher localities had huge banks of lead-acid batteries in their stairwells.
And while the two of us agreed that this vestige of our shared past seems like a century ago, he argued that this had led to ‘generational’ trauma. How? Well, he argued that it had led to the reduced offtake of electric vehicles. “There is no reason electric vehicles should not sell, not just because they’re cleaner, but they’re just so cheap to run”, he said, maybe I’m paraphrasing, but this was the gist.
And this was well before the new electric vehicles that we have seen in the past 12-odd months, yet EVs remain just about 4 per cent of the overall market. And one reason, if I believe this gentleman,........