Is the Electric Vehicle hype well deserved?
By: Subodh Kotkar
Tags: Future Of Mobility, Sustainability, Electric Vehicles, Zero Emission Vehicles, Mobility

Lets find out……..

Probably not, at least in India. We are a country with a vehicle population of over 25.3 crores (2017) most of which are concentrated in the metro cities, the cities with extremely high population density, most of whom are living in tall buildings. Developing the charging infrastructure in such cities is difficult, main reasons being

1. An EV takes at least 7–8hrs of time to get fully charged, fast charging is an option but that is advised to use only in emergency situation by the manufacturers.

2. Space is a big constraint, where to leave our vehicle for charging overnight?? …and the first and last mile that needs to be travelled to reach the charging station would also be a great challenge.

If we want to see EV as an option we will have to create charging infrastructure for our cars next to / within our residential / commercial complexes. This option may not be as practical as it sounds as developing this type of infrastructure is costly and our country does not have that kind of disposable cash as of now or in the coming few years.

But we can surely have a greater impact of EV’s in the two-wheeler and the three-wheeler market, and also in shuttle service, because

1. Batteries are small

2. Time required for charging is less

3. Battery swapping is possible because of compact battery

This 2 and 3-wheeler market is expected to represent over a $500 billion industry in India by 2025.

OPPORTUNITIES:

EV’s are Cheaper to maintain:

While the price of an EV may look a lot more than petrol or diesel cars, the cost of running this EV is way less than your normal car. Buying this EV would get even cheaper with government bringing out new schemes, incentives and tax benefits for Carbon free vehicles and also various discounts in charging infrastructure.

Maintenance: the cost of maintaining an EV is way less than a normal petrol/diesel car as they have very few moving parts main components being inverter, motor and battery. But unfortunately, these cars can’t be repaired at your roadside garage.

Better for the environment, better for you:

These cars have zero tailpipe emission actually they don’t even have a tailpipe. With the technology advancing the range of EVs is increasing at a light speed so say goodbye to range anxiety. So, to sum it up the future of driving is bright and clean.

OBSTACLES:

Battery improvements:

Since the first battery was invented in 1799 using only copper and zinc, researchers have harnessed many other elements, each with its unique properties, for use in batteries.

But there hasn’t been much progress in batteries the past 200 years. As there are only 118 elements’ in the periodic table and we have very few elements that don’t react with each other. So, for making that radical change in the battery performance there are constant innovations going on like the foam batteries or the graphene battery which might be able to solve some of problem but coming up some new ones.

Amount of element’s used to manufacture a 70 KwH battery is approximately 250 kg of rare earth metals of course we can’t connect all dots but yeah, we need to think of the second order effect to. (Are we harming the environment in some other way, to protect it from greenhouse gases?)

Place where your electricity is generated:

About 80% of India electricity comes from burning fossil fuels and 74% of it electricity is generated by burning coal, so even if you are thinking that you are protecting the environment by driving an EV, 80% of the time you are wrong because the damage has already been done at some other place even if it’s not visible. But there is a positive side to this problem with the world relying more and more on renewable sources of energy generations and we might be able to tackle this problem to some extent in the recent future.

And also, we have 52 years of gasoline (petrol/diesel) left at current consumption levels and excluding unproven reserves.

So, the problem is not that gasoline would get exhausted because of continuous use, the problem is the ever-increasing air pollution.

Battery life:

The problem with a battery is that as the charge of the battery exhausts to less than 30%, the vehicle can’t be operated at the max possible performance levels, which is not seen in petrol/diesel vehicles. And as the battery gets old it gets discharged faster and you need to charge it more frequently. You must have seen this in your old laptop, as the laptop gets older it gets discharged way faster than compared to when it was new but with upcoming innovations, we hope to tackle this problem.

“Problems are not stop signs, they are guidelines.” — Robert H. Shuller

Conclusion:

Yes! EV’s are going to have vast impact on our lives irrespective of the country we live in. So, get ready to experience cheap and clean commutes.

But good things take time, be patient and stay tuned in to see the world make a paradigm shift and also be a part in making the world a better place by contributing in any which way you can.