How EV Ready Are We?

The government is committed to transitioning to 100 percent sale of zero-emission vehicles, which is an important step toward sustainability goals and decarbonising the transport sector. India is also committed to the 2030 EV ambition. The government is trying its best by bringing different schemes and different programs to boost the knowledge of people towards awareness of EVs.

Currently, there are 913,000 EVs on road and 1200 charging stations across the country. In a study conducted by CEEW, around 14,800,000 EVs are expected to be on road with the support of nearly 29,000,000 charging stations. India is far behind in achieving this dream due to a lack of charging stations, bad infrastructure, and anxieties among people due to lack of knowledge, to know more about the reasons Statiq did a survey. In this survey reputed companies like Ather Energy, Audi, Tata motors, Baja Auto, and others participated in six different categories. The result of the survey shows that 92 percent of respondents feel that India will be EV ready by 2030.

The government of India has extended the FAME II scheme from 2022 to the end of 2024. The government wants to introduce a battery swapping policy and also 19 state governments are making policies for EVs in which they give subsidies.

Private players like Amazon aims to have net - zero emissions by 2040; Ikea Group aims at zero-emission deliveries in all cities by 2025; Zomato an Indian food delivery service company has recently joined the Climate Group's EV100 initiative and has committed to more than 160,000 EVs. To add, in 2021 many automakers have announced their plans to transition to a fully electric future, for example, Mercedes announced that all newly launched vehicles will be fully electric from 2025; General Motors aims for 30 EV models; Volvo has committed to being fully electric by 2030, BMW targets 50 percent of its sales to be fully electric by 2030 or earlier. Lastly, the transition towards electric mobility is not only restricted to government efforts, but private players play an important role in this transition.

The survey found the top 5 states with the maximum number of respondents. These states include Maharashtra, Delhi, Haryana, Karnataka, and Uttar Pradesh. These 5 states accounted for -80 percent of the total responses among which Maharashtra accounted for 23 percent of the total responses, followed by Delhi which accounted for 16.5 percent of responses. The graphic below represents the various EV targets/policies adopted in the above-mentioned 5 states. Additionally, these can act as an example for the other states and can be used by them during the development and designing stage of their respective EV policies.

Talking about the challenges, 80 percent of people feel lack of infrastructure is a big challenge whereas additionally, 60 percent of people feel the high cost of EVs is another challenge. Lack of knowledge with respect to benefits, battery safety, and other safety aspects of EVs, financing crunch, and expensive spare parts are other challenges. But despite these challenges, 86% of people are willing to switch to EVs among which 55 percent are extremely willing to switch.

There is 32 percent of people who are willing to spend on EV between 10,00,000 to 15,00,000 and 26 percent willing to spend above 15,00,000, 42 percent are willing to spend less than 10,00,000, and 5 percent want to spend less than 5,00,000. The brand is also a matter of concern for the people, TATA Nexon is the first preference of 62 percent of people followed by MG ZS EV with 23 percent. Whereas for two-wheeler Ather is the first choice of 44 percent followed by Ola Electric with 24 percent and Hero Electric with 22 percent. Talking about the infrastructure, 76 percent feels that there should be the presence of fast chargers at charging station. Another important factor that needs to be focused on is to explore cleaner sources of charging such as solar charging.

All these factors will help to build consumer confidence and also provide ease to use and finally promote cleaner sources of energy and contribute to the environment.