India’s Electric Story to Continue Post Covid-19
In a virtual roundtable on ‘Post COVID-19: Future of Electric Vehicles Global and India’ conducted by ETAuto, experts opined that the outlook for EV industry remains positive despite COVID-19 disruption with 30-35% of sales to be electric by 2025 which includes mild hybrid, full hybrids, plug-in, and battery.
The Indian electric vehicle (EV) market will continue to be largely driven by the two-wheeler and three-wheeler segment, experts opined at the ETAuto Virtual Roundtable on ‘Post Covid-19: Future of Electric Vehicles Global and India’. According to them the EV market will recover swiftly from Covid-19 setback when compared to their ICE counterparts and their outlook remains strong in the medium term.
In the two-wheeler industry, around 15% of the vehicles could be electrified perhaps in the smaller segment, especially below the 100cc segment.
Echoing the same sentiments, Sulajja Firodia Motwani, Founder and CEO of Kinetic Green Energy pointed, “In a vast market like India, where 90 percent of people are commuting by two-wheelers, three-wheelers and buses, the outlook for these sectors remains very strong.”
Sulajja expects electrification of scooters to be faster than motorcycles with almost 30-40 percent of scooters to be electric in the next 7-8 years.
She noted, “In two-wheeler market where 2.5 million vehicles are sold, whereas 70 percent are motorcycles and 30 percent are scooters. I think the electrification of scooters will be much faster because its urban vehicle motorcycles might take a bit longer because in rural areas, electric will take time due to the charging infrastructure required and mindsets.”
Terming the electric three-wheeler market to be the lowest hanging fruit that will recover the fastest, Sulajja Firodia asserted, “I expect almost 30-40 percent three-wheelers in the country to be electric in 7-8 years. The electric three-wheelers offer the lowest cost of transportation, with e-commerce delivery coming in and a higher need for last-mile connectivity solution.”
Lack of long-range EVs, cost of acquisition has been the major restraint for electric passenger car uptake in India. Electric cars have not been a success story in India in the past, but as per Frost & Sullivan, the market will grow but not at the same level as the target set by Niti Aayog in India.
Sarwant Singh said,” In passenger cars and buses, the uptake will be low till the issue of charging infrastructure is addressed. Until there’s a fast-charging network, it will always be a challenge. The government needs to encourage EV imports with tax benefits or aggressively accelerate “Make In India” to achieve milestone.”
Meanwhile, Firodia added,” Adoption of electric buses will be driven by the government demand and the government is committed to putting 15-20 thousand buses in the next years.”
Source: Frost & Sullivan