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

Mr. Piyush Goyal had attended a conference on 16th February 2016 in Mumbai and this was one of the sessions he attended. This is probably where he got this idea from.

https://youtu.be/iVo8YiO6uW4

The video will also help some of us understand how solar and wind power are connected with EVs. The video quality is not the best but it is enough of an eye opener.

India usually gets to skip stages of iterative progress due to the trial and error done by the more advanced economies. In the telecom sector, India skipped mass adoption of landlines and went directly to mobile, they skipped UMTS and went directly to HSDPA.

Hybrids is one stage India has almost skipped and will go directly to Full EVs as soon as they start becoming affordable vis a vis fossil fuel cars.

India has too little resources to be able to splurge on a Hybrid. As I see it, a Hybrid is wasteful, a stop-gap arrangement! It has too many duplicate components when you can really make do with just one. A car can be run either on just the IC engine or on just an electric motor. Using both like they do in a hybrid is just gluttony IMO.

A Hydrogen Fuel Cell vehicle is also just a glorified range extender Hybrid EV. The fuel cell just generates electricity to charge the on-board battery (just like the petrol motor in the Chevy Volt or the BMW i3) which in turn powers the wheels through an electric motor.
Then there is the inefficiency to produce, transport and store Hydrogen coupled with the lack of filling stations. The only good reason to use a FCEV over an EV is the speed of refueling.

By comparison, infrastructure for charging your EV at home already exists. As for highways, Tesla Supercharger stations are already capable of giving 200 miles of range in 30 minutes of charging. I understand this is longer than a typical fuel stop but bio breaks 300km apart are much longer than this. And besides, there are a million ways to make money legitimately off people stopping to charge their EVs on the highways even if the actual electricity is offered for free.

With the advancement in battery technology we are witnessing everyday, the day is not far when even Lead Acid car/inverter batteries will be left behind w.r.t. cost. Just 5 days back, Chinese researchers showcased a new AGDIB (Aluminium Graphite Double Ion) battery which is twice as energy dense as Lithium batteries w.r.t. volume and 40% more energy dense w.r.t. weight. All this when it will cost just 50% to produce.

The day is not far when the Price will be right for the taxi sector in India to switch loyalties since they wouldn't mind the 'half of diesel/CNG' running costs and much lower maintenance costs. Given their affinity to 'kitna deti hai', if I am an Indian auto manufacturer, those are the people I would target first instead of running the cars in circles at the VRDE.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lobogris (Post 3942538)

I wouldn't want to change it with another one which might be say 8 years old and would provide inferior performance and lesser range.

What your saying is hypothetical situation very typical to Indian situation.

When you look at big picture where most of cars are EV and everything is standardized like how fuel and fuel stations are today. Even battery quality, AMC, battery compatibility, etc are guaranteed. Battery health is far more easier to find out than engine as its complex. And im sure, battery to battery your car performance wouldn't change, its like saying better battery means faster mobile!

Charging battery takes time, more than we want to spend, we dont even have patience to wait in queue at petrol stations, forget about waiting for battery charging imagine in middle of night when people are sleeping in car :uncontrol I would just swap with fully charged one in 2mins and drive off...

Will charging stations hold up to the vehicle density that we have in certain places? We see petrol stations itself having long queues and causing traffic snarls and cannot imagine what could happen with charging stations.

Its easier for fleet operators to standardize on batteries that could swap in a jiffy (relatively). Will be a big bother for common people and would be forced to use overnight charging which will limit their travel time. This should be fine for office and in city driving but unless we have complete solutions, not sure how it will work.

This is where fuel cells trump but then it has the problem of generating the fuel.

Quote:

Originally Posted by srishiva (Post 3943022)

Probably the LPG model can be adopted where you swap the batteries (ala cylinders) at an outlet. The batteries will be owned and managed by the service provider. This way the time spent will be minimal. Maybe concept of 2 batteries need to be there for this to work efficiently. Again that has its own limitations of extra weight.

This is one interesting area to follow and may throw up loads of new age entrepreneurs as well

Quote:

Originally Posted by srishiva (Post 3943022)

Charging infrastructure is really needed only on highways. Privately owned EVs can be charged at home and all such snarls and queues inside the city can be avoided altogether.

Intra city cabs can also charge overnight with ease, very few cabs would run more than 300km/day doing intra city runs. CNG filling stations, at least in Pune, are much more inconvenient than this solution.

The only issue is for cars traveling inter-city on highways. Those are the ones that would need public charging facilities the most.

Quote:

Originally Posted by indian21r (Post 3943169)

There was a high profile battery swap company called Better Place that promised a lot, raised a lot of capital and then went belly up - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Place

Quote:

Originally Posted by mustang_shelby (Post 3939524)

It will also be interesting to know what their plans are for producing enough electricity to power all these cars. We are already a power deficit nation.

Actually, it may be achieved relatively easily with some policy changes.
1. Our major power deficits (in terms of blackouts to connected consumers) are at particular times of the day. The grid has excess capacity at other times. Smart metering with off-peak rates will help.

2. You pay for the vehicle charging electricity units, but they don't count towards your monthly power rate slab.

3. Manufacturing, sales, road tax and insurance incentives for electric scooters and cars makers. You need a range a models suiting different tastes for this to be a vibrant market. A 300km range electric celerio, a 200km range nano, maybe a great electric scooter from Hero, an eActiva from Honda:).

4. Create a national standard for charging infrastructure. Make it mandatory for offices, factories and commercial parking lots to provide this standard charging system on 10% of parking spaces in top 20 cities. Raise the %age and expand the cities in phases. The charging should be paid, and either a vehicle ID/RFID or a mobile app based system can be used for payments.

5. Congestion charge at rush hour on busy roads in top 20 cities. You can easily use the RFID tag system for this electronically. Exempt electric cars.

6. Annual carbon tax on all fossil fuel vehicles based on total carbon emitted per 100km. Keep a lower slab for public transport and goods transport.

7. A minimum 7-10 year warranty on electric battery packs and charging system used in cars, to reduce buyer anxiety for battery life.