The third largest automobile market and third largest energy consumer in the world, India absolutely must switch to electric vehicles. The government recognized the urgency of the situation and initiated initiatives, first steps on a long road.
“When I was a schoolboy, I never brought a bottle of water to school because I drank water straight from the tap. Today, I give my son a bottle of water when he goes to school because the tap water is not drinkable. What scares me is that our children may have to carry oxygen tanks in the future, if air quality continues to deteriorate at this rate,” remarks Sriram Goplakrishnan, director of research and development in India of Valeo, a French automotive supplier, at the recent Clean Air Summit in New Delhi.
India is suffocating with pollution. Topping the list, designed in 2018, is Gurugram, a city located about 30 km southwest of New Delhi, India’s capital city.
Home to more than twenty million inhabitants, New Delhi is eleventh on this list, and is therefore the most polluted capital in the world, followed by Dhaka in Bangladesh and Kabul in Afghanistan.
The causes of pollution are numerous. Air pollution occurs in both personal and professional contexts and occurs particularly during daily activities, such as driving. According to a study carried out by the Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), automobile pollution is responsible for 28% of fine particulate matter emissions (2.5 PM) in the Delhi metropolitan area, emissions which are between 50 and 100 times higher than the acceptable level, all year round. Automotive pollution is shared between: trucks and tractors which generate 9% of these toxic emissions; two-wheelers and three-wheelers which produce 7% and 5% respectively; cars and buses which generate 3% each; and light utility vehicles which produce 1%.
Every year in autumn, pollution in Delhi worsens when farmers in northern states burn stubble from the previous harvest to prepare fields for winter planting. Even though the practice has been banned, farmers, especially those with small farms, continue to do it because alternatives are expensive and time-consuming. Another time of the year when pollution reaches its peak is during the celebrations of Diwali, the Indian festival of lights, when millions of firecrackers go off and fireworks erupt, so that the entire city as well as the plains in the north of the country are plunged into a dense, suffocating fog that takes days to dissipate.
Unable to control farmers or Diwali celebrations, the government attempted to combat pollution by cracking down on construction activities, industry and automobiles. Automobile transportation accounts for only 11% of total air pollution nationally. However, it is much higher in Delhi, with an extremely high automobile density, estimated at around 11 million vehicles, including around two million cars and seven million two-wheelers, which are the main sources of automobile pollution.
Due to the increase in population and rise in disposable income, the number of cars and two-wheelers has increased rapidly. The situation is similar in other major cities such as Bengaluru (capital of the southern state of Karnataka) and Mumbai (capital of western Maharashtra).
Ambitious goals
Recognizing the fact that to reduce air pollution, automobile emissions must be reduced, or even better brought to zero, the Indian government has pushed the industry to quickly move towards electric vehicles and has also promoted public transport enabling people to leave their cars at home. Three years ago, the government announced the ambitious target of moving to 100% electric vehicles by 2030, sparking an outcry in the industry which had not even begun to set foot in the electric vehicle sector. I’ll bulldoze it.”announced Nitin Gadkari, Indian Minister of Road Transport, at an automobile industry conference.
Compared to EU countries such as France, the UK and Germany, which only plan to phase out conventional combustion engine cars in 2040, this was an extremely ambitious target for India. And in July this year, much to the relief of industry players, the government relaxed its target, which is now 30% electric vehicles of all new vehicles produced in 2030.
The relaxation was indeed timely for an automobile industry, which had to face significant difficulties over the past year. After two decades of double-digit growth, new car sales in India have declined by 28%, forcing all manufacturers to halt production, at least for several weeks, as dealers refuse to stock more cars.
Although their target to go electric has been reduced by 70%, the Indian automobile industry has not even started its long journey towards this transformation. In 2017, a year marked by a slowdown, the sector produced 2.5 million cars. Yet, at the end of 2017, there were only 6,000 electric cars capable of operating on the country’s highways, while 3,600 electric cars were sold in the same year, representing less than 0.14% of total sales. The sector has ten years to increase this figure to 750,000, although no growth is predicted for the automobile market over the next decade, despite India’s population increasing by at least 20%. over the same period.
As for two-wheelers and three-wheelers, the situation is slightly better. Last year, 126,000 two-wheeler electric vehicles were sold, while sales of three-wheelers
According to Nitin Gadkari, the Minister of Road Transport and Highways, the northern state of Uttar Pradesh is surprisingly the leader in the race to go electric with almost 139,000 battery-powered vehicles, followed by Delhi with 76,000 electric vehicles. Most of these vehicles, however, are rickshaws or electric carts, legalized in 2015 following the adoption of a law which recognizes them as motor vehicles.
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