Team-BHP - Power minister wants India to become 100% e-vehicle nation by 2030

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Originally Posted by drashkum (Post 4265620)

In today morning papers. The Union minister wants car sales to slow down, especially diesel cars so that he need not add another lane on the road it seems. He wants vehicles to run on ethanol so that people can buy fuel off the wineshop shelves and drink and make their car drink too.
Mr. Gadkari, there is no need of new lane if you optimise the present roads. Half of the arterial roads are encroached, there are only 70ft roads on pretext of 100ft roads.

Lol, 80,000 crore. Isn't that the reason why we pay tax? More than 50% of the on road cost of a car is tax.

Folks

Don't read too much into his statements.
Agreed, optimizing private car usage, reducing crude imports etc. are environmentally and economically important points, but such statements isn't the way it is actually implemented.

This is a ploy to create panic in the manufacturers boardrooms, and eventually get them to make large donations to the party. People who are aware of the party funding model of BJP will know that they are big into corporate funding for poll spends compared to the grand daddy party which banks on traditional pyramid bribe collection model.

Once the automakers have filled the coffers, these statements will remain statements. Much like this same minister's pre-poll promises about abolishing RTO's across India.

cheers

Having seen the Government's flip flops and ad hoc measures in the last few months - specially in relation to automobile sector, one can't but agree with this piece in Firstpost. The gist of the article can pretty much be summed up by its title:

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Shift to e-vehicles won’t happen at gun point, govt needs to handhold auto firms.

Sometimes, nay, oftentimes, the policies of the Government are thought out, shaped and framed by the whims and fancies of an individual who very often says something in public without actually thinking about it and is later compelled to follow it up in order to avoid embarrassment.

A sample from the quoted article:

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The Times of India report said. "You may not like it, but I wish it from my heart that your growth should be less. If this growth continues, I will need to add one more lane to national highways, which will cost a whopping Rs 80,000 crore” Gadkari told stunned representatives of the car industry.

The Firstpost article ends on a very practical note by saying:

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Ultimately, policy making should be a consensual exercise where stakeholders are consulted before any diktat is issued. This is where the government seems to be erring, repeatedly.

I recently shifted to Gurgaon from Delhi and I am just aghast at the amount and duration of power cuts that we face here. Ofcourse our environment friendly diesel generators take over in less than a minute and power is restored. So instead of putting diesel directly in my car, I will either need to burn coal in a power plant or diesel in my generator to produce electricity and charge my car. Kudos to our ministers and their advisors. Ofcourse this is to be expected given that there is no minimum education qualification level to lead the nation!

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Originally Posted by ecenandu (Post 4265627)

Lol, 80,000 crore. Isn't that the reason why we pay tax? More than 50% of the on road cost of a car is tax.

While I am a big believer of the switching to alternative modes of transportation, I wonder if the minister has considered the following points

1. Indian auto manufacturing forms more than 50% of the all manufacturing activities done in India.

2. Unlike the other major export from our country (IT Services), automobile manufacturing is one area of our economy which is truly world-class & we export to numerous countries, including advanced markets in Europe & North America. And unlike IT services, it's an activity which provides well-paying jobs to millions of low-skiled & unskilled job-seekers.

3. We don't have decent public transport, barring few metro cities. Cars are not a luxury for middle class India. It's an aspiration product for many Indians, after housing.

These ministers haven't traveled in a public transport in decades. They have government-provided chauffeur driven behemoth SUVs at their disposal. This minister is ready to torpedo 50% of the already reeling manufacturing sector.

And look at the arrogance! His first thought on seeing his chef come in a car is not 'Wow! India is economically progressing! We are achieving more economic equality like US or Europe!'

His first thought is 'My lowly Chef comes in a Car! What's his Aukaat?? (Status)'

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Originally Posted by drmohitg (Post 4266505)

I recently shifted to Gurgaon from Delhi and I am just aghast at the amount and duration of power cuts that we face here. Ofcourse our environment friendly diesel generators take over in less than a minute and power is restored. So instead of putting diesel directly in my car, I will either need to burn coal in a power plant or diesel in my generator to produce electricity and charge my car. Kudos to our ministers and their advisors. Ofcourse this is to be expected given that there is no minimum education qualification level to lead the nation!

+1 - Right on, Dr Mohit! Complex issues of governance seem to be happily dispensed to semi-literate fund-collectors also moon-lighting as ministers!

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Originally Posted by shashanka (Post 4266841)

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+1 - Right on, Dr Mohit! Complex issues of governance seem to be happily dispensed to semi-literate fund-collectors also moon-lighting as ministers!

At the moment, India doesn't have factories to make Li-Ion batteries for the billions of dollars worth of mobile phones that are sold here. We do not have Lithium reserves either.

Electric cars make perfect sense when you have wind and hydroelectric projects producing the majority of the electricity. When most of your power plants are burning coal, it makes absolutely no sense to do this. Renewables are being inducted into the grid, but that's not the base load. The actual utilization of whatever solar power capacity addition that you read about in the newspaper would be about 30% of the installed capacity. Electrons are not produced at night or on cloudy days.

Like a lot of things happening in India these days, this sudden realization that electric cars are important is more of a publicity exercise than anything else. If they were serious, they could have made autorickshaws run on electricity. I remember seeing quite a few of them 15 years ago in Ahmedabad. Bajaj used to sell one. What happened to it?

I think this is a ploy to distract people from real issues. 200 million people in this country live on less than $2 a day. 80% of the employment is in unregulated sectors which offer no social or health security. Public transport systems in all Indian cities are running on borrowed time and the most eco-friendly way to travel in the country (Railways) is also the most unsafe. Had they been serious about improving the quality of the environment, they would have worked to improve road conditions, provided incentives for CNG cars, regulated the transport sector, ensured wider availability of CNG. That's a lot of work and they were smart enough to avoid that by distracting us.

I kept mentioning CNG because it emits 45% less hydrocarbons when compared to diesel. Had all states adopted CNG for public transport vehicles, vehicular pollution would have reduced by 45% through one simple step. By focusing on electric vehicles, the government might end up increasing the import bill further.

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Originally Posted by Nissan1180 (Post 4266877)

Electric cars make perfect sense when you have wind and hydroelectric projects producing the majority of the electricity. When most of your power plants are burning coal, it makes absolutely no sense to do this.

I agree with most of your points, except this one. The larger the power plant, the less the per unit of power produced pollution. And shifting the pollution load to the remoter parts of the country where the thermal power plants are located will also help in the short term by making the cities more livable, so IF the power supply chain problem is fixed, this can be a very useful bridge to the time that all power production is by non fossil fuels, that is a longer way away.

But there is a very big IF there : For our mobile phone service, the lack of infrastructure on the ground did not matter because the product can be delivered wirelessly. As of now and in the foreseeable future, electricity cannot be, and must have wired connections that are reliable 24x365 all the way from the power plants to the points of consumption. And not having THAT is the deal breaker for any change in the way power is produced and used in the country today. It is also very difficult to achieve, because this needs 24x365 reliable infrastructure to be laid down across the length and breadth of India, and 24x365 service to keep it running.

I can't see that happening, based on all I see around me in India today.

If done properly, 2030 is not such a short sighted solution (but 100% can only be in dreams) 13 years to solve the electricity generation issues and most of it coming from renewable means is not that difficult.

Agreed that a clear roadmap needs to be established, but I dont think Auto makers should have majority say in that. Look at the mileage/emission standards proposed by public/govt bodies. Auto makers would never do anything on their own with profits being their sole criteria. What they need is a stable road map which the ever oscillating minds of our politicos cannot do.

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Originally Posted by Nissan1180 (Post 4266877)

At the moment, India doesn't have factories to make Li-Ion .........government might end up increasing the import bill further.

Hello Nissan1180,

Well put, I would say. I will just add my two cents worth and say that a better ICE solution would be using some form of bio-fuel (bio-diesel from jatropha or waste generated alcohol like Brazil's gasohol) for better primary carbon footprint. In fact a couple of years ago I was on the verge of investing in a small (1000L/day) oil extraction plant for jatropha seeds. Fortunately, better sense prevailed looking at the bio-diesel scene, which seems to be in cold storage at present.

Its a pity that fuel-cell tech. applications in cars has not yet progressed far enough. That would put a sock in all arguments on carbon foot-print and the like. Though a point to ponder on would be the huge amounts of steam/water vapour (the principal emission from fuel cells) which would be discharged into the atmosphere by the billions of vehicles using them, is an issue not yet answered by the boffins!:D

Maruti Suzuki's Chairman interprets the recent push on EV's.

Transport minister & the government are not going to kill this industry hence believes there is no literal interpretation to be taken from Minsters recent jibe.

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His intention is to implement this policy of electrification. That’s what we have to understand. It is futile to go into actual words. The government are not going to kill this industry. They can’t, they won’t, why should they? This industry is a huge generator of wealth and employment. But they (the government) want the industry to adopt a new direction and to tell it that they are serious about it. That is all that they are doing. It is now for industry to see how to make it happen.

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In some ways, I appreciate what he is trying to say because by and large, the government announces things but doesn’t follow through. Implementation is our weakest area. If he says he is going to bulldoze these two things — and I hope by bulldoze he means get things implemented — what could be better?

Toyota - Suzuki

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I am great votary of that partnership. It gives me access to technologies, to be honest, which I would never be able to from Suzuki. Toyota’s technology bank is far bigger than Suzuki’s, (along with) the ability to develop technology because of the much larger resources across the world. There is no question that, if that becomes available, we have access to technology that will take us way into the future

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Today I don’t have a product bigger than the Ciaz. I could get bigger products from Toyota to sell, which will be engineered for India, changed from global products. Of course, they will also want us to give them some products, which will be sold through Toyota India. If we can increase capacity adequately, Toyota will also be able to sell our products. Production will only increase.

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