India’s export hub image: RC Bhargava, Maruti Suzuki Chairman, Make in India can reinforce

New Delhi: Even as connected, autonomous, shared and electric mobility solutions are disrupting the automotive landscape globally, vehicle makers can’t afford to take their eyes off conventional vehicles which will continue to be a formidable part of business in the future.

Maruti Suzuki Chairman RC Bhargava on Thursday emphasised there is a need to focus on alternate energy solutions such as biofuels and compressed natural gas in India’s drive to bring on road cleaner and greener vehicles and reduce the dependency of oil imports.

Given the current cost structure of electric vehicles, customer acceptance would continue to be a challenge in the near future. In the meantime, hybrid vehicles — vehicles powered by biofuels and compressed natural gas — can contribute significantly towards reducing India’s oil import bill.

“Only 10 million cars, out of the 70 million vehicles on road by 2030, will be electric.

So for the non-electric vehicles, we need to consider energy solutions which are clean and green,” Bhargava said on the sidelines of the ETAuto Global Auto Business Summit.

The day-long summit deliberated and discussed issues right from ‘Make in India’ to mobility solutions for future including the role of startups and innovators in this disruptive environment.

Industry stalwarts including RC Bhargava, Vivek Chand Sehgal, chairman of Samvardhana Motherson Group, and Shi Jie, head of engineering at China’s largest car maker SAIC Motor, gave their views on the disruptions ahead.

Sehgal cautioned that there is no doubt the automotive industry is being influenced by connected, shared, autonomous and electric vehicles, yet they still account for a very small portion of the overall industry.

“Yes, there is a lot of talk, but the action is not as big as talk. About 102 million cars were sold, only one million were electric, there are factors emerging on the horizon but they are not dramatic, there will be a gradual shift. The core market is still very strong and one cannot lose sight of it to grow,” added Sehgal.

Motherson Sumi today has become the fastest growing auto component maker in India and fast expanding wings globally.

India is on the radar of the biggest vehicle makers in the world and it is set to become the third-largest car market in the coming three to five years. The experts attending the event underlined that beyond the significant domestic demand opportunity of the future, India can reinforce it’s image of an exports hub with ‘Make in India’ for not just small cars but electric or hybrid vehicles.

Ashok Taneja, MD & CEO of Shriram Pistons, welcomed governments move to offer no import duty for electrical vehicle components. However, he stated that these duties should be gradually hiked in order to promote local manufacturing. 

Delhi doesn’t even know how many e-vehicles it has, Beijing plans 48L charging points by 2022

The Delhi Electric Vehicle Policy, 2018 notes that sales of new electric cars worldwide surpassed a million units in 2017, with stocks at three million that year. More than half the sales were in China, where electric vehicles (EV) had a market share of 2.2%, while in Norway, the world’s most developed market for electric cars, this green option accounted for 39% of new car sales.

The policy also says, “Bloomberg New Energy Finance expects EVs to reach upfront cost parity with internal combustion engine vehicles by 2025, largely driven by rapid reductions in battery costs. This in turn is expected to drive global sales of electric vehicles to 11 million vehicles in 2025 and 30 million in 2030.”

The Lancet Countdown 2018 report similarly observes that despite road transport continuing to be powered almost exclusively by fossil fuels, there have been notable gains. “The use of non-fossil fuels (electricity and biofuels) has continued to outpace fossil fuel energy, rising more than 10% on a per-capita basis compared with an overall growth of 2% for fossil fuels from 2013 to 2015. This trend had a small, but notable, effect on the overall share of non-fossil fuel energy for road transport, which rose from 3.9% to 4.2% over these two years,” the Lancet report says.

Lancet put the growth of global per-capita electricity consumption for road transport as growing 13% from 2013 to 2015. In Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, per-capita electricity consumption for transport more than doubled compared with a 10% increase in non-OECD countries. “In China, the percapita electricity use was five times the global average because of the country’s high market share of electric vehicles,” the report says.

For the EV rollout in Delhi, the most crucial issue would be charging points. The state government would have to follow the example of other countries to encourage people to opt for electric vehicles. The Chinese government, for instance, plans to build 4.8 million charging points by 2022 at an investment of $1.9 billion. UK has announced a £400-million Charging Infrastructure Investment Fund to support companies in installing charging points. In the US, the California Public Utility Commission has approved $738 million and the New York Power Authority, up to $250 million, to build charging infrastructure.

Delhi has other lessons to learn too. Experts say the EV programme will prove successful if accompanied by strong legal mandate, welldesigned subsidy policy and proper implementation strategy. “California, for one, has a zero emission mandate, which makes sure that a certain percentage of vehicles have to be zero emission,” points out Anumita Roy Chowdhury, executive director, research and advocacy, Centre for Science and Environment. “The Netherlands has a good subsidy policy for EVs, while in China’s Shenzen, authorities have linked electric mobility with public transport and constituted a 16,000-strong electric bus fleet.”

She adds that Delhi’s policy is in the right direction, but needs a clear legal mandate. “They have to fix specific timelines, and monitored implementation needs to start now,” she says.