[Maverick_4662]

Originally Posted by Gaur

Sorry but you seem to be mixing up Feeding People and providing Nutrition to People.

At the moment we have enough to feed (wheat/rice) people but not enough nutrition for which we need Pulses, which is actually in short supply.

Grains being diverted for ethanol production might actually be either surplus wheat or Rice, which we have excess of thanks to high MSP provided to them.

The farm bills intended to address this problem as well, but thanks to short-sightedness unfortunately stuck.

Nutrition and hunger both dear sir. India ranks 94/104 in the global hunger index. For reference that is lower than Pakistan , Sri Lanka, Bangladesh etc.

Also , according to the global nutrition report:

"1) India is among 88 countries that are likely to miss global nutrition targets by 2025. India is also the country with the highest rates of domestic inequalities in malnutrition."

"2) India is identified as among the three worst countries, along with Nigeria and Indonesia, for steep within-country disparities on stunting, where the levels varied four-fold across communities."

Great numbers of our citizens suffer from malnutrition but an even more agonizing thought is that a huge number sleeps hungry. The onus is on the government to provide each and every citizen with a healthy and nutritious meal as is their fundamental right as propounded by the honorable supreme court while interpreting article 14 and 21 of our constitution.

The irony is that India is also one of the biggest wasters of food with thousands of tonnes going to waste from our FCI godowns. Why not fix that and ensure not a single citizen sleeps hungry? Why legitimise this lack of efficiency and turn a blind eye to the poor to divert these grains to produce ethanol to bring down our forex expenditure? I am all for renewable tech and environment protection and even fiscal prudence but not at the cost of a fundamental right being denied to even a single citizen. I would say priorities are misplaced here.

[psyph3r]

What other reason could it be ? Politically connected sugar barons probably stand to benefit the most, hence the push.
I remember Gadkari used to be heavily invested in ethanol production with his company Purti power over 10 years ago, guess he's using his influence now.


https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...w/45244442.cms

https://www.thehindubusinessline.com...le20360693.ece

[saisree]

Simply put, EV’s are far away from being the mainstream vehicles in India. Sense prevailed and they are pushing for blends to decrease importing at least one barrel.

[nandrive]

A country which is unable to feed its poor thinking about subsidizing mobility of its rich private citizens by pushing EV is what I call misplaced priority. Achieving 24 hours uninterrupted electricity supply to each and every home itself will take 5 to 10 years. Not sure 100% of the villages are electrified or still few are left. Government is doing the right thing by not subsidizing EV.

[surajram]

How does ethanol blending work with diesel vehicles? Last I checked, Diesel consumption in India is 2x of Petrol by volume - so that’s where the major saving on import bills are.

[torquecurve]

While, we can all read between the lines and find issue with the government pushing for ethanol blending, the reasons are not just 'political'.

A large part of the fuel used in automobile sector goes to 'commercial' transport. In the villages/ semi rural spaces/ urban low income group, even bikes double up as commercial transport BTW moving light to medium goods.

If you look at the top 15 two wheelers sold in India - they form almost 70% of the market - you will see most are the 'commuter' bikes/ scooters. Going by a conservative estimate of 40% sold in Rural markets - that number is a whopping 2.7 Lakh two wheelers. Can these be easily replaced by EV's? Yes maybe - but practically there are some difficulties.
My FIL had purchased an electric scooter (scooter is still there, FIL has moved on, so i said had) - this was after they purchased one more 'scooter - Access', plus a small car. The electric scooter is solely to run errands. The other scooter (petrol) is used for getting heavier stuff around, going to the city areas, longer distance riding, etc. The Electric scooter can barely manage my weight plus my wife. Plus it costs as much or rather a bit more than the Access. We Indians love overloading the vehicle - As any person who has been to rural south India and you will hear stories of TVS XL's transporting safety pins to 'milch animals'! Imagine that with an electric two wheeler.

The other challenge with electric vehicles is the 'balance' between power and range - Faster EV's (more powerful motors etc) use up battery capacity like 'crazy', Faster also means higher loading. We have three EV's in our delivery fleet - LiFePo4 batteries - range varies from 100-120 kms (empty) to 70-110 kms (loaded) based on factors such as traffic density, types of road (going up flyovers with a load - may the 'force' be with you!)


I have been to China, multiple times - the large cities and smaller ones. The Chinese use the electric vehicles as 'last mile' and primarily depend upon public transport (Metro/ light rail/ buses) and walk a lot! Compare that to India, and we are used to using private vehicles - I know of people who use the Delhi metro - but travel by car to the metro station and take a taxi to the final location even if it just 1Km or so from the destination metro station.

Lesser said the better about 4 wheel EV's the better. We have enough threads on how they can make a good second car in the garage.

[DarthVeda]

What I don't understand is the tax regime with ethanol mixed petrol. Let's say petrol per litre is 40 rupees, and it gets taxed like crazy gets to 100 rupees. However, ethanol per litre is no way near 40 rupees and might be way cheaper, if they mix 10% or 20% ethanol, the price per litre of fuel must reduce as the taxes on ethanol shouldn't be same as petrol neither the cost. This is just robbery from government.

[kotirajendra]

Originally Posted by Thermodynamics

At the end of the day as a vehicle owner we are going to pay more because of lower calorific value of ethanol as compared to regular gasoline. That means we would have to fill more often and may also visit garage more often.

Not just that, evaporation point being lower we will face fuel loss as well.

[gupta_chd]

Originally Posted by batish

Hear me out guys. Read in news today, the government intents to save on import bill by increasing ethanol distillation capacity for fuel.

I know, the mills are owned and operated by people who are active in politics but they are at the state level. From first step onwards, this idea seems flawed. Why cannot government focus on electric vehicles rather than doing this?

Why is Central government not pushing EVs to the core?

The answer is really simple if you think from govt perspective. It may not be very noble.

Govt wants to reduce fuel import bill but does not want consumption to go down or say tax collections to go down. If they push for hybrid or phevs and meet the stated objective, the tax collection would get affected. On the other hand, with increased ethanol blending, the fuel consumption volumes would remain same from tax perspective.

[IP_Man]

This decision is purely influenced by sugar industry politics and will not benefit Indian economy, on the other hand long term percussion will be devastating to the agriculture economy. Why? Because this decision is indirect incentive to grow more sugar cane crop. It damages soil, It require huge water so insane amount of water is sucked from the ground that reduces underground water level that affects other poor farmers that depends upon underground water for the farming. It is very much evident in Marathwada region of the Maharashtra.

[Carpainter]

Like OP and many others, I also believe that instead of E20 or E25 govt could have pushed for PHEV as that would have solved two purposes. On one hand we would have got higher mileage and hence lower fuel import for the government and on the other hand people who are sceptical about EVs like me and don't have the inclination to adapt or not aware of the benefits would have gotten used to running a car on battery. So the transition to EVs would have been easier on people.

Complete shift to EVs will take time in India and introducing ethanol as a stop gap measure is an extra burden on the manufacturers, not to mention the other complications in producing that much ethanol in India. Needless to say the indecisions of the government is driving companies crazy that is evident from the lack of investment from Toyota, Ford's etc. I don't want to get into a political debate on who benefits from what but they should come up with a proper roadmap for the sake of all parties concerned.

[Altocumulus]

Ethanol can be manufactured from sugarcane and corn crop waste as well. It doesn't need to be the live crop. So a single harvest can be used for food as well as production of ethanol.

EVs will not be possible in the next 30 years and it will get tougher day by day. Why ???

Traffic jams and associated charging infrastructure. 80 - 90% of the people I see drive their cars with less than quarter tank of fuel, nearly at E in most cases. If you stand for sometime in a fuel pump, bikes mostly fill for INR100 and cars for INR500. That's the mentality.
Now with everyone having electric cars, hardly anyone will be responsible enough to step out on the road with a fully charged car every day because they will want to extract every ounce before they put it for charge. Now you are there with a 5% charged car in a traffic jam and you end up drying up. Can you imagine the chaos. Which lakhs of vehicles on the road everyday even if 0.1% gets stalled it will be a huge chaos.

A successful EV infrastructure doesn't just require charging stations. It also needs a super smooth flow of traffic which is not possible in India. I think instead of EVs, Flex Fuel cars are the way to go.

[cloudno19]

I had the exact same question when I heard this news and I could only think of the following reasons for this-

1. Governments (Central + State) would not want to loose out on the huge source of revenue. That would be a huge dent to fill from other sources.
2. Lobbying by Automobile industry to go slow on EV. They could maximize profits by utilizing as much of the known ICE tech as long as they could in countries like ours, by committing to investing in our country which would be much cheaper than researching and reestablishing new assembly lines to support EV platform.
3. Political pressure- most of these petrol pumps are owned by politicians, Sugarcane industry is largely driven by politicians and who would want to put a stop to their own source of income

Government is investing so much on building expressways and road infrastructure, what really stops them from investing in EV infrastructure at least around these newly built expressways. I am sure, if Government wants, there will be more than handful of entities interested in setting up a public private partnership to develop this infrastructure. When world is moving towards 200kWs of recharging stations for EV, we are celebrating on planning (not even installing) recharging stations at 50KWs which is what countries had about 10 years ago.

Whatever they may say in terms of clean fuel, clean energy, climate change, the reality is they may not act unless it is being forced on to them or it hurts them in some way. And just to be clear, this is irrespective of which party is at the helm of Government at the Center or State.

[GeeTee TSI]

If we look around the world without prejudice, it is quite evident that 'gas' stations offering E85 fuel as one of the many offerings as well as flex-fuel vehicles are quite common. As with most things automotive, India lags behind the rest of the world in not even having this option, so it is not another hair brained idea like say, the 4m rule!

This article says ethanol blended fuel is as good as the renewable nature of source from which it is derived. While I am not convinced (or aware of yet) of this aspect, the idea of Ethanol blending per se is not original or groundbreaking; but rather about time we had such an option