[Bismaya]

It seems that Govt of India is working on reducing vehicular pollution. They decided to jump directly to BS6 from BS4 – 4 years prior to its first proposed date of April 2024. Manufacturers are having a hard time keeping up with it already.

Indian govt is planning on banning sales of petrol engine (up to 150 cc) scooters and motorcycles from 1st April 2025. The draft also includes banning of petrol / diesel three wheelers from April 2023. This leaves us with the option of Electric bikes & scooters. Opinions?

[Engine_Roars]

It is high time us Indians get our acts together & get serious about the increasing pollution. However, I am not very optimistic about this plan & I would be glad even if 50% is achieved of this. There are lot many factors when we consider socio-economic scenerio of India with regards to these plans. We are not a rich country, most of our population lives in rural areas where 3 wheelers & other diesel vehicles are a lifeline. Most of our population still rides 2 wheelers below 150 CC. Creating an infrastructure to replace all of this & for running so many electric vehicles in 6 years is something I don't think is an easy target.

[RiGOD]

The news link.

[GTO]

Sounds too ambitious if you ask me. IMHO, electric power will first come to fleets & commercial vehicles. Hyundai also agrees with the same:

“If you run a fleet, you can have your own charging stations, you can have your own hydrogen re-fuelling stations,” Biermann explained. “For private use, infrastructure for charging EVs (in India) is almost nothing. And for fuel cells it is even less. For the time being, fleet business is more in the focus for electrification.”

Source

Where will the crores of 2-wheeler owners charge their rides? The sub-150cc category is what makes the commuter class. Even if a certain amount of public / street charging stations are introduced, it will be absolute mayhem.

Electrification isn't like BS6 or safety norms where you can make a switch overnight (at the manufacturing level). It has to be a gradual move because street-level support is required. I think it'll be fleets -> commercial users -> premium models -> mid-range models -> cheaper models.

[Rahul Rao]

I would like to see the shift to electric start with captive fleets that run on short fixed routes.
The target should start with City buses then taper down to the Municipal trucks, Company staff buses and finally to Tata Ace type sub 1 Ton mini trucks which mostly run in city limits and are at rest overnight.
Rahul

[roy_libran]

Originally Posted by GTO

Sounds too ambitious if you ask me
..........SNIP..........
Where will the crores of 2-wheeler owners charge their rides?

Where do the hundreds of thousands, and soon to be millions, of E-Rickshaw owners/drivers or Ice-cream carts charge their rides?

Point is that the seemingly disorganised sectors, hidden from our collective elitist vision, has probably already found solutions to such conundrums and are happily leveraging the cost advantage. Motorcycle/Scooter commuters might simply leverage the same.

[Motard_Blr]

A direct jump from BS4 to BS6 is ok but petrol to electric is not. We just don't have the infrastructure to manage even a small fraction of today's vehicle population converted to electric.

Outside of major cities, electric supply is in short supply, intermittent and unreliable. It's easy and inexpensive to transport liquid fuel to anywhere. Depending on the requirement, the fuel could be transported in a pipeline or even in cans. This flexibility is both practical and convenient. You can have a permanent petrol bunk or a mobile petrol bunk or even a guy selling petrol in plastic bottles in a remote village.

In the foreseeable future I can only see city dwellers benefiting the most while people in rural areas are severely disadvantaged.

Until battery technology sees a huge leap forward, I can imagine a drop in the GDP because huge numbers of people are waiting and not producing anything, while their vehicles are charging!

[Red Liner]

What utter nonsense. This is never going to happen. If it does, the ruling party can kiss their chances of returning to power right away!

When most villages do not have electricity at the moment, we're going to jump to e-mobility en masse?

Vehicular pollution is not a problem in tier 2 towns and below. Because there are hardly any vehicles in the first place. It is a significant issue only in Tier 1 Cities. Implement "non-registration" of such vehicles within the City RTO's, which will begin curbing a good % of new buyers. Offer higher subsidies to manufacturers to start pushing e-bikes at lower prices in comparison to the petrol counter parts.

And lastly, every single form of public transportation on fossil fuels should be banned outright, and forced to go E. The Government is stupid to target privateers, when their own vehicles are spewing venom everywhere.

[NH08]

This proposed ban, if it happens, would be in the major cities only as the required infrastructure (charging stations) would not be possible for such huge number of vehicles in the entire country by 2025. Even the scheme to use e-vehicles for govt. officers failed just because of poor number of chargers.

Originally Posted by roy_libran

Where do the hundreds of thousands, and soon to be millions, of E-Rickshaw owners/drivers or Ice-cream carts charge their rides?

Most of these are getting charged illegally, at the cost of bill paying, rule abiding citizen.

https://mercomindia.com/illegal-char...osses-discoms/

[srishiva]

Where would I charge my 2 wheeler ? At home, ofcourse. For people who might be endlessly and aimlessly roaming, it might be difficult. But I would hope they charge more for fossil fuel vehicles instead of cutting them off completely. This will help people to adapt to the changes that we need to bring about in our use of vehicles.

For me, the difficult part is for our trucks etc to get charged. Most of them are not owned by big companies and they would need to use some kind of paid public infrastructure. Hope they are tended to properly.

[GTO]

Originally Posted by roy_libran

Where do the hundreds of thousands, and soon to be millions, of E-Rickshaw owners/drivers or Ice-cream carts charge their rides?

Anywhere & everywhere, I guess. Remember that commercial vehicle owners will put up with more trouble than privateers. Case in point = the long CNG lines for taxis. You won't find any private car owner willing to wait that long. Ever wonder why CNG is a hit with taxis and not so much among privately owned cars?

Also, a related article from Bloomberg:

More than a quarter of all the power India generates is either pilfered for various purposes or lost in transmission, according to figures cited in local media as of mid-2018. The power sector loses more than $16 billion a year to theft — more than any other country in the world.

Power stolen to charge three-wheeler rickshaws costs more than $20 million a year in Delhi alone. There are 100,000 such vehicles on the capital’s roads, and only a quarter are registered. Losses for state electricity retailers rose more than 60 percent in the first nine months of the fiscal year through December.

[honeybee]

I think the mission statement or the policy objective will be used to drive things further down the line.

Once the objective has been set, the machinery will start moving to achieve that objective. We should see more sub-objectives from the other related departments.

Yes, we might not be able to meet the objective in totality, maybe, but even if we go half the length, it will be hugely significant.

[GTO]

A letter from Rajiv Bajaj:

[payeng]

Once the Government of India has made up ts mind, It Will be Implemented.

Recent Examples of Govt intervention/Enforcement are:

1. The BSIII Vehicles ban
2. Making ABS Mandatory for 2 Wheelers > 150 cc

Next inline - BSVI complaint vehicles by 2020


If EVs for < 150 cc is enforced, it could be catastrophic for business of 4 companies: Hero (Motorcycles), Honda (Scooters), TVS (Mopeds)& Bajaj (3Ws).



Personally I welcome such an initiative. Nothing is more important than making the air breathable for our next generation.

[fordday]

Originally Posted by payeng

If EVs for < 150 cc is enforced, it could be catastrophic for business of 4 companies: Hero (Motorcycles), Honda (Scooters), TVS (Mopeds)& Bajaj (3Ws).

Personally I welcome such an initiative. Nothing is more important than making the air breathable for our next generation.

Right.
Personally, I don't care much about what happens to these companies just like they never cared about my air.

On another note there are so many electric scooter launches in the last few weeks that we will need a separate thread for E-scooter launches. To name a few

Kymco along with 22 motors.
Bajaj Urbanite as a brand.
Battre.
Avera Respro.
Yamaha EC-05.
Sahara EVols.
Ampere from Greaves Cotton