Charging up policy

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Charging up policy

Wednesday, 27 February 2019 | Pioneer

Several agencies want to set up charging stations in Delhi. But will that be enough to encourage electric vehicle sales?

There can be no doubt that the future of personal mobility inside urban areas will be electric. The only doubt is: How long  will that take? And there is also the chicken and egg problem. What should come first? The electric cars or charging stations? Well, while some electric cars have already made it onto Delhi’s roads, some charging stations are also being set up. Now, the New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC), the Delhi Government and the Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL), an entity owned by India’s power public-sector units, are establishing several charging stations across the heart of the capital. This is a good start that must be celebrated and indeed emulated by other Indian cities. But now, it is the time for Indian car-makers to step up to the plate and start selling electric vehicles that buyers want to buy. It is public knowledge that both Maruti Suzuki and Hyundai Motor Company, the country’s two largest car manufacturers, are going to launch proper electric vehicles this year that might entice buyers — an electric version of WagonR and the Hyundai Kona. Unlike some electric vehicles on offer in India today, these vehicles should be able to assuage buyers that they will have enough range. At the same time, work by the Urban Development and Power Ministries on encouraging home-owners to upgrade their infrastructure to allow charging at home through new policies is also being undertaken.

But we should not underestimate the scale of the challenge. Even with new charging stations across the capital, Delhi will have around a hundred charging points, whereas Beijing, where the Government has been building charging stations for a few years, will have four million for its fleet of electric vehicles. Also, more encouragement has to be given to electric two-wheelers across the country as these would be cheaper and an easy goal to implement. Work also remains to be done on improving India’s electric grid infrastructure that can support electrification of vehicles, thanks to work over the past few years. India already produces enough and more power. But that leads to a different set of questions given that much of our power remains thermal and is not extremely clean. Electrification will just transfer the pollution problem from cities to rural areas. While much work has been done on renewables, the Rajasthan desert is now dotted with thousands of wind-power generators. We cannot make electrification a situation of ‘emissions elsewhere’ but thankfully, some serious thought is being put into the problem by every level of Government. At the same time, electrification should not become the single answer for curbing vehicular pollution. Other alternatives such as increased gasification, waste-to-energy solutions and hydrogen-fuelled vehicles must not be forgotten just because electricity leads the way.

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