Four-wheeler electric vehicles (EVs) in India need to be different from what is used in other countries for affordability, says a White Paper by office commute platform Move-in-Sync Technology Solutions (MIS) and Ashok Jhunjhunwala from IIT Madras.
The paper, ‘Electrifying Growth – Adoption of Electric Vehicle in Corporate Fleet’ was released at the MIS’s tech conclave ‘TransporTech 2019’ here on Wednesday.
Referring to the Indian scenario, it states, “Vehicles with large battery and fast-charging do not make economic sense. An option is to purchase EV without battery and lease battery as required, swapping batteries when needed. This approach implies that the capital costs of the vehicle is similar to that of petrol vehicle and operational costs are much lower than the petrol-vehicles.”
Advocating this approach for taxi-fleets, the paper says one may use EV with RE batteries for personal vehicles. “Capital costs will be slightly higher compared to petrol-vehicles as well as EVs without batteries, but the operational costs will be lower. RE battery swapping ensures no range limitation. This may be ideal for personal vehicles,” it says.
Prof. Jhunjhunwala said, “With greater focus on R&D, India’s transport can become all electric by 2030. There is a need for innovative alternative solutions for electric vehicle technology adoption with the application of the Internet of Things to get the maximum out of batteries. The one size fits all strategy does not hold well in the case of EVs as vehicle composition is different in India owing to the preponderance of public transport and low-cost vehicles.”