[Vitruvius]

With the recent upsurge in interest in electric mobility, I was left wondering what will become of my dirty diesel if I don't want to upgrade yet?



Came across this article in the Sunday's edition of ET Auto

A study by the Council on Energy, Environment, and Water has concluded that India's passenger vehicle ownership will increase 2.9 times between 2016 and 2030. Also, India had around 65000 fuel retail outlets in FY19, and they've been growing at an annual growth rate of 5% because of the rising oil demand.

This year itself, till August 2021, EVs accounted for nearly 2 percent of all new vehicle sales.

If India manages to reach 30% EV sales share by 2030, the oil demand would still increase nearly two fold - to cater to the concurrent rise in passenger vehicles, and two wheelers. This would translate to setting up of 60,000 new fuel retail outlets.

The think tank has also proposed of ways to increase EV adoption. The article makes for an interesting read.

I'm sure nobody was mistaken that our oil pumps were shutting down, but I was of the opinion that we were on a downward trend with respect to fossil fuels and transport but that's clearly not so.

Long story short, I'd still be making my trips to the pump for many years to come!! That's if I do make it alive till the end of the ICE era

P.S.: No electric cars were harmed during the writing of this article

Source

[Mafia]

It is still early days and most projections are guesses at best.

Does adoption of EV's really reduce pollution considering India currently produces much of its electricity using coal?

Hydrogen-cell fuel is still on the horizon. EV's adoption may be limited only to passenger vehicles initially. Large commercial transport vehicles are going to be in circulation for longer.

The governments will only stop the productions of IC passenger vehicles in the next 10 to 20 years. the renewal of the last diesel passenger vehicles will be another 10 years after that. If you time it well, you can drive diesel for 20 years. I really doubt you would want to do that though as the EV adoption increases, IC car makers will not update their cars, and towards the last 5 to 7 years of sales, no updates to cars will be made, parts will be tougher to source, akin to when a car company shuts down.

[phamilyman]

The core thing is - petrol pumps are a REAL estate business because no honest person can ever BUY land or lease it at market prices

It is deep pocketed landed folks who run such businesses - for many of them it is black money being converted into white even if the business doesn't make a roaring profit.

They won't grow, sure - but not going away in this decade for sure while the current vehicle fleet lives out its years. By 2035, sure things could get really dire if you consider how much things have changed since 2017

[jkrishnakj]

I don't see the end of the fuel stations for the next decade/decade and a half at-least. We may see fewer new ones, but the older ones are here to stay.

I recently remember a thread here about BPCL making 1000's of their pumps to include EV charging stations. If BPCL were to really pull this off, its only natural that the others follow suit and we will hopefully have a lot of EV stations around us and on the highways. The whole 'Range anxiety' will forever be gone with such a model.

[Shresth_EV]

Originally Posted by Mafia

Does adoption of EV's really reduce pollution considering India currently produces much of its electricity using coal?

Hydrogen-cell fuel is still on the horizon. EV's adoption may be limited only to passenger vehicles initially. Large commercial transport vehicles are going to be in circulation for longer.

It does, as reported by ICCT. And that includes battery production.



The figure is 19% by today’s status of electric supply, and 34% if India stays on track for 2030 renewable energy goals.

The part about hydrogen is acceptable because it is far too wasteful to use batteries in large vehicles like ships, locomotives and planes.

Although even after using renewable energy for H2 production, you’d need 3x more electricity than you would to directly run a motor than produce hydrogen and use it in fuel cell inside vehicles to generate electricity. Commercial vehicles earn by the payload and batteries eat into payload.

Originally Posted by Vitruvius

This year itself, till August 2021, EVs accounted for nearly 2 percent of all new vehicle sales.

If India manages to reach 30% EV sales share by 2030, the oil demand would still increase nearly two fold - to cater to the concurrent rise in passenger vehicles, and two wheelers. This would translate to setting up of 60,000 new fuel retail outlets.

I'm sure nobody was mistaken that our oil pumps were shutting down, but I was of the opinion that we were on a downward trend with respect to fossil fuels and transport but that's clearly not so.

Source

Attachment 2238367

This will take long to change not because of slow adoption but because of the mindset. As noted by @phamilyman, these are owned by majorly, deep pocket/biz tycoon/political connection kind of people. I say this because I see an example in our own extended family.

People still see petrol pumps as a viable business and for all intents and purposes, it still is and will be, not just considering existing cars on road but also those which get sold by the hour. (I’m looking at you, XUV/Thar waiting period).

I say lack of awareness and not lack of adoption because Indians are inherently risk averse and anything they aren’t fully aware of is thought as a risk. The pump owners may add chargers later, in addition to pumps, but it will not be a substitute for a long time.

And anyway, except highways, the ideal location for a charger is in fact places of public utility like mall parkings, restaurants, supermarkets and so on. I have yet to see a charging park which stands isolated from public utilities. Even superchargers are placed strategically to allow drivers to make use of time rather than sit idle for hours.

You would see no decline or even growth in new petrol pumps opened, because almost no one is setting up “charging parks”, not even in first world, let alone india. The model of operation of charging stations and petrol pumps are in stark contrast.

[Vitruvius]

Originally Posted by Shresth_EV

The model of operation of charging stations and petrol pumps are in stark contrast.

Very well put. Petrol pumps are 'fill-up-and-go' type places where one only checks out the retail area when in need of the loo!

Charging stations could double up as retail areas as well owing to the time spent there by each car owner.

This would be more of a thing on highways rather than within the city, where charging options are aplenty.

[airbus]

Fuel pumps are not going anywhere in near future. We still don't have infrastructure to enable majority of us to keep an electric car as one and only car in family. I have not seen anyone in my friend circle buying an electric car, while number of them would like to make queue for likes of Mahindra Thar, Mahindra XUV7OO, MG Astor etc. It will take decades to build infrastructure for electric vehicles in a populous country like us. If I am an owner of electric vehicle, with current infrastructure, I would be worried whether I would be getting a free slot for charging on a long drive during a holiday weekend?

[Early_Adopter]

The mass adoption of EVs have multiple barriers and when I say EVs - I actually mean passenger cars!

1. The current battery technology is still not matured and is still evolving - although the maturity level that we see today is much better than what it was say 2 or 3 years ago.

2. Since the technology is still evolving, it poses the challenge of the price parity on Total Cost of Ownership and also the energy density (aka range).

3. Due to these uncertainties, no large auto manufacturer (other than probably TSLA in US and some companies in China) are willing to bet big on EVs and are still sitting on the fence.

4. Even if battery technology matures, the charging infra poses an equally large challenge. Many households (even in US and Europe and of course in India) do not have dedicated parking facility at their residences. This means, majority of them have to rely on public charging infrastructure.

5. And the biggest hurdle is the charging infra along the highways. The real estate costs, the transformer and the cabling needed for powering the chargers are big upfront costs. On top of that, if we add the reliability of power supply from the local Discom and the cost of backup power (DG? - that would be very ironical), solar power (this requires loads of real estate again) - all these will increase the cost of charging the EV pretty high to be economically viable.

6. Finally, the consumer mindset needs the biggest change. Like another BHPian mentioned, we are very risk averse and rightly so - on one of the largest investments that we make on our vehicles and so we want to be doubly sure that we get the best value for our money.

What would dramatically change the whole thing would be when there is TCO parity between ICE and EVs, and that seems to be little farther away.

All the above for just passenger EVs. For two wheelers, the challenges aren't that many and possibly, the adoption rates could be much faster. Hopefully, Ola will pull of a TSLA in India for 2 wheelers. The adoption rates could be faster for smaller CVs (less than 1 ton payloads) used for last mile deliveries.

In summary, we have a long way to go and it is not just the Government, but several stakeholders have to come together to make this effort a huge success.