[libranof1987]

Extremely disappointing that the EVs couldn't run even 80kms on a single charge; can't really fault the officials for rejecting the vehicles.

Full Article

According to a senior official from one of the ministries involved in formulating rules and regulations for electric mobility, both models failed to run even 80-82km on a single charge within city limits. Battery capacity was not up to the mark, compared to global standards, the official added, requesting anonymity.

Recently, Bloomberg reported the second tender of 10,000 units had been postponed to 2019 due to lack of charging infrastructure.

“The real reason behind the postponement of the third tender is the unavailability of quality products in the electric vehicles market at this point in time,” said the third of the three people mentioned in the beginning. EESL did not reply to the question about the reasons that led to the postponement of the tender for the third phase to 2019.

[volkman10]

Originally Posted by libranof1987

Couldn’t find an e-version of this news; .

Here is the full article,

Poor performance, low mileage among reasons govt officials are refusing to use EVs

Link

[GTO]

Thanks for sharing! Moving posts to a new thread.

In effect, government officials might be facing the same problem that civilians currently do with EVs (range, where to charge etc.). And that's without them even paying the exorbitant price that a layman has to for EVs.

[selfdrive]

How many kms does a government official have to drive every day? If it is within 80 kms, then there could be other assumptions coming into play:
- Lack of snob value. Someone would be looking forward to a 'baddi gaddi'
- No options for making 'expense claims' on fuel. Lost opportunity, anyone?
- Any others we could think of?

The very fact that most of us have this as the first opinion of government officials says a lot. Why not force them to use public transport instead of allocating vehicles to them. This will reduce the number of vehicles on the road and they will also work effectively to improve the standards of public transport. If mango people have to work towards buying their own car or struggle to commute on a two wheeler, why have this perquisite? Convert it into cash/ salary as conveyance allowance as done for all others and get on with it.

All said and done, Tata and M&M would be working hard to develop these vehicles. So if they have any feedback, they should provide it to the manufacturers to improve the vehicles. Whingeing about this in the media smacks of entitlement.

[rajathv8]

Originally Posted by selfdrive

How many kms does a government official have to drive every day?

80 Km is not a lot really. I know quite a few whose IT office commute in itself is about 50~70km per day. I at times travel well over 100Km within Blore on some days for personal errands (What it does to my left leg is a different matter )

I believe stating a need of > 80Km for a gov official may be a valid claim.

[libranof1987]

Originally Posted by selfdrive

How many kms does a government official have to drive every day?

While I agree with most of your other points (why not use public transport, officials could want a car with "snob" value); I think 80kms is a very minimal requirement.

Most cities/towns have expanded tremendously, as has traffic. Add to that continuous use of a/c and the range will drastically reduce.

Tata and Mahindra just have to work harder; they will, hopefully, once the Govt. shows some confidence and motivation for EVs to develop. A stable policy is needed, not a repeated flip-flop on their stance.

[Amartya]

Originally Posted by selfdrive

How many kms does a government official have to drive every day? If it is within 80 kms, then there could be other assumptions coming into play.
...
All said and done, Tata and M&M would be working hard to develop these vehicles. So if they have any feedback, they should provide it to the manufacturers to improve the vehicles. Whingeing about this in the media smacks of entitlement.

Your reference to pocketing fuel reimbursements is cited in the article itself. But that being said, and I am not one to take the side of the government, there are simpler explanations. The lack of range (80-82km), the charging infrastructure (charge at work/charge at home for how long etc.) are both more critical issues. Even if they drive less that 80kms per day, having to charge the car (say once every 2 - 3 days) is an annoyance.

The question is why did the issue with the range not be something that they could foresee (or at least during the contract negotiation)? Or if they foresaw it, why/who ignored it?

these two models have limited range. Their battery packs are of 17 kilowatt (kW)

The previous generation of the Nissan Leaf had a 24KWh (I am guessing the numbers in the article too were supposed to be in KWh) battery, heck even the Chevy Volt IC generator equipped car had a 18.4 KWh battery.
This leads me to my point about retro-fitting batteries in cars designed for IC engines. The Tigor and eVerito might have had a chance if they were designed the same way as the Chevy Volt (Volt not Bolt) running in series hybrid mode (i.e. the IC engine charges the batteries via a generator instead of driving the wheels) with a 17KWh battery. Of course, there would have been a price impact, but the vehicles would have been a lot more practical in terms of range.

[CrAzY dRiVeR]

Originally Posted by rajathv8

80 Km is not a lot really. I know quite a few whose IT office commute in itself is about 50~70km per day.

Agreed.

Infact, forget cars - I'm not comfortable with this similar range offered by EV scooters itself. There have been days where my wife's office commute itself came close to around 60 kms on the two wheeler, and letting her do that on an ageing 80km range electric scooter would be pushing our lucks.

I've had office commutes of around a 100 kms at some point in life - and EVs wouldn't have even made in one way! Believe EVs will only really start affecting IC engines only when they start offering more than 250 - 300 kms range at the bare minimum.

Originally Posted by selfdrive

Why not force them to use public transport instead of allocating vehicles to them.

Totally different topic - and our country will take a lot of time reaching that state of social equality. State owned vehicles are here to stay, atleast for the short to medium term.

[ashis89]

Originally Posted by selfdrive

How many kms does a government official have to drive every day? If it is within 80 kms, then there could be other assumptions coming into play:
- Lack of snob value. Someone would be looking forward to a 'baddi gaddi'
- No options for making 'expense claims' on fuel. Lost opportunity, anyone?
- Any others we could think of?

My dad and some his colleagues cover anywhere between 90-120 kms in a normal day in their respective vehicles (intra and inter city). Add to occasional outstation trips, 200-300 kms one way. For someone like him, an EV will be useless.

- For snob value, these are proper sedans and should be giving decent snob value unless a very senior bureaucrat is very particular about a D-segment car.
- The few Govt. departments that I know, have dedicated Transport sub-depts. which take care of the transport needs, vehicle maintenance, refueling, etc. The official is not bothered about these things. The driver and the back end team get the job done in time. Again my knowledge is limited here.
- Even in relatively small city like my hometown, it is easy for the car to cover 80+ kms in a day and officials travel to different offices for meetings, etc. Unless there is sufficient breaks in between these trips and charging infrastructure at each of those stop points, these cars will be useless. For ex: Most of these vehicles cover 30k-50k kms every year.

The way I see, these cars can be earmarked for intra-city use on fixed routes and fixed jobs. Setup charging infra in all the offices. For anything extra, pull out those fossil-fueled cars from the inventory to do the job. It will help reduce the carbon footprint to some extent.

The very fact that most of us have this as the first opinion of government officials says a lot. Why not force them to use public transport instead of allocating vehicles to them.

These people are 'entitled' to a vehicle as per their designation. I know people who travel alone with their driver in their 7-seater vehicles. Fact remains they have to attend different meetings or go to different offices based on their role. Their work timings are different on different days. It's difficult for them to pool with others. I remember my dad used to give lift to few of his colleagues in his car as they worked in the same office. After some time they stopped coming as they didn't want to wait late in the day for his work to get over. They chose to drive in their personal cars or took buses.

Also remember the reluctance of the VIPs to remove the red beacon in their cars when rule was enforced?

[hrman]

Hmm. The proverb , "Dont look the gift horse in the mouth" should be applicable for these babus. Its free of cost for them, there is no need to pay maintenance and fuel cost, they have servants and drivers for charging it and everything. So what really could be their problem?
That said, it is true that the infrastructure for EVs needs to be drastically improved and range to be increased much beyond what is currently on offer. Till such time, these complaints will be coming against EVs.

[avisidhu]

At this point I can just say one thing, the 80 KM limit everyone here is saying is less, is contentious. In tier 2 and 3 cities and for a huge number of govt officers, 30-40 odd KMs would be the norm. I am willing to bet that a 50 KM daily drive limit should cover at least 70-80% of this workforce pan India, if not more.

Such forward looking rules cannot be made with everyone in mind, else we'll be stuck forever. Some backup vehicles running on petrol/diesel, for those with higher running or outstation trips cannot be such a huge ask certainly.

As others mentioned, there might be other factors at play here. If I'm not mistaken, fuel reimbursement is 200 liters or more per month for senior officers. Decent money which goes into the pocket for those with low running.

[Ragavsr]

The real and the main reason is that officials stand to lose out on the fuel allowance. Cut the fuel allowance and these entitled idiots will line up for EVs to be alloted.

Not everyone person has a round trip distance of over 80 KM. Considering that offices allotting electrics as official vehicles will have chargers, you are looking at 160 KM round trip coverage. Don't tell me most people drive more than that daily.

Originally Posted by CrAzY dRiVeR

There have been days where my wife's office commute itself came close to around 60 kms on the two wheeler, and letting her do that on an ageing 80km range electric scooter would be pushing our lucks.

That's a crazy amount of distance to be covered on a scooter regardless of gender. Can't imagine doing that even on a good bike.


Also what's with official vehicles being allocated with drivers? Can't these people drive themselves. Especially the police department. I mean, most sheriffs abroad drive their own cruisers, why do inspectors here need drivers?

[bordeaux]

Back in 2013, my wife used to get reimbursement for 100 liters of petrol when she was just a scale 2 officer at a national bank. She didn't even drive a car. She just had to have a car in her name to claim the reimbursement. Now, coming to the big babus who are getting an official car, they must be Scale 5+ at least and the fuel allocated to them will be much more. Add to that, the expensive nature of fuel these days. It's a lot of money to let go. If I were a babu, I wouldn't want to get an EV even if it came with an infinite free battery :-)

[Screwdriva]

"government officials get huge sums as car fuel allowance. If they take these vehicles, they cannot claim fuel expenses,”

This says it all!

[ashis89]

Banks are different where they pay the employees to maintain their own vehicles. In pure Government departments, an official is provided a chauffeur driven vehicle. This vehicle is owned by Govt. and the chauffeur is also a Govt. employee. The vehicle may change every day of the year based on availability and need. Bigger departments have a big pool of vehicles and keep changing the assignments.

The fuel and maintenance bills are generated on a monthly basis and approved by the a series of people. They keep record of no.of kms covered, average FE of vehicle (drivers try to manipulate this figure to sell off a few litres of fuel) and fuel consumed. Then a Treasury bill is made which is then transferred to the pump owner or the service center. No reimbursement made to the official as he gets to travel in the vehicle only. In case of long outstation trips, the driver has to pay for refueling if needed and gets it reimbursed from office. Again the Odo reading, FE and bill details are tallied.

In this process, for a high running vehicle, the drivers manage to make 2-4k pm rupees by faking some expenses or quoting low FE. The 'babu' gets no share in this unless he/she stoops so low as to claim a share in that 2k. Even for that, the person might have to take into confidence a lot of people in the hierarchy.

PS: The drivers have been my friend over years as they know my interest in cars. Hence all this info. Hope it helps.
PPS: IIRC, the limit for fuel per month per vehicle is 250 liters but even that can be increased if there is need but several approvals are needed for it.