Vintage yesterday green today

It was while talking to his friend and business mentor Arun Duggal on how the environment had got rejuvenated in the lockdown, Major (retd) Manjit Rajain recalls having said, “Nearly 27 per cent of the air pollution is caused due to vehicular emissions. We cannot stop the wheel of urbanisation, but we can surely do something about the vehicles?” 

That epiphany led to the conception of a green initiative or a reinvention called the Electric Beetle. The idea was to aid owners of vehicles older than 10 years to convert their petrol or diesel models into an electric one. This would increase the lifespan of an older car and also help reduce Delhi’s AQI levels. 

But the process was not easy. Duggal — an IIT Delhi alumnus and Founder of the Centre of Excellence for Research on Clean Air (CERCA) at IIT Delhi, and Rajain — the global chairman of Tenon Group of Companies, then started exploring possibilities to determine if vintage cars would make a better alternative than modern-day vehicles.

“There are government restrictions on the use of vintage cars as old engines produce high pollution emissions. So we thought of replacing the petrol (IC) engines in vintage cars with a clean electric engine,” informs Rajain, adding, “Duggal suggested we convert one of my VW Beetles into an EV vintage car and quantify its impact on air quality.

Thanks to him and his friend, Jaawed Khan, an IIT-D engineering student, the air-cooled petrol engine mounted on the rear of the car was replaced with an electric motor, controller, lots of batteries, a battery management system and other EV components. The final product is much more fulfilling than what we had imagined.”   

Time and money
It took almost two years for Rajain to become confident in using his Electric Beetle for daily commutes. The entire makeover, including the cost of engine, battery charger, motor BLDC and labour, amounted to Rs 7.5 lakh. “There was a lot of learning en route to ensure future conversions of similar nature don’t take as much time as this one did,” he says. 

Countering pollution
At the onset of every winter, especially during Diwali, the rising pollution and its dangerous effects sees knee-jerk reactions from all quarters. But neither the industry nor the government has any time tried to work in this direction. “At present, there are limited options for electric vehicles manufactured by the Indian automakers. The ones brought in by foreign car manufacturers are way above the means of common man. There are no incentives on purchase of electric vehicles.

This needs to change,” he says, adding, “It is time the government encourages converting old diesel or petrol cars into green electric vehicles.” Rajain says that Khan has put in a lot of effort to ensure this conversion experiment is a success. “Arun and I are supporting him in this initiative, and are keen to get the word out so that others too are encouraged to convert their classic cars into green electric ones. I am sure when people see a classic bright yellow Beetle on the road as a brand ambassador of green electric vehicle, they would get the message. It is time we clean Delhi’s air,” says Rajain.