The bumpy road to India's EV policy

India's EV journey has been chequered, despite having the Reva long before Elon Musk conceived Tesla

The EV Evolution: Then, Now and Next of Electric Vehicles

By Anil Sasi

Published by Hachette

241 pages ₹399

 It must have helped that the writer is an experienced journalist with specialisation in the energy and automotive sectors. Along with years of reporting, Anil Sasi also brings his hands-on knowledge of the shopfloor into the book, having worked at a Japanese car company before entering journalism. The EV Evolution is all the more relevant now because of the strong mass market retail growth across electric segments, including two-wheelers and passenger vehicles. It also coincides with a greater government emphasis on EVs, both at the Centre and states. More than 20 states and Union Territories have notified EV policies highlighting the need for green mobility. The recent Delhi EV policy, with a target of 30 per cent electrification of all vehicles by 2030, is one such. 

 

Mr Sasi sets off on this EV journey keeping policy at the centre of things. The story appropriately starts in March 2024, when the Union government offered a mix of sops ranging from a sharp cut in import duty on EVs to manufacturing incentives. Many referred to the government package as the “Tesla policy” as it met the duty-waiver demands of the American car maker, the writer notes. It’s another matter that the Elon Musk-led company has explored several locations for setting up factories in India but has not made any concrete move yet. Its India itinerary is at this point limited to retail stores. 

India was perhaps following the China model in EVs through the Tesla route, as the book explains. The Texas-headquartered company started manufacturing in China in 2019 and the Shanghai plant now constitutes more than half of its global deliveries. What worked for China was its “single-minded focus’’ on fostering a home-grown EV industry while using Tesla’s expertise in the sector, Mr Sasi writes. As opposed to Beijing, New Delhi’s policy tweaks are considered ad hoc, “ignoring the tenet that electrifying a country’s vehicle fleet should be a multi-technology pathway’’. The direction of fleet electrification must be spelt out clearly vis-à-vis technological pathways, the book highlights. And, that a single nodal ministry must handle the technological pivot. 

Sandwiched between the introductory overview of India’s EV ecosystem and the Chinese playbook is a fascinating chapter on the “chequered history’’ of EVs. Robert Anderson and Robert Davidson are not very likely to figure in a list of top Scottish inventors, Mr Sasi writes, mentioning the more prominent names such as James Watt, JL Baird, Alexander Graham Bell and Alexander Fleming. “The two Roberts from Scotland though had an outsized impact on the electric mobility sector. Engineer Robert Anderson took a shot at developing an  electric car way back in the 1830s…. a decade later in 1842, Robert Davidson, the son of a grocer, put together a battery-powered locomotive called Galvani…’’ Another interesting bit of trivia in the chapter is about the first motor car driven on Indian roads in 1897, when a resident of Calcutta imported a car to India, and then about the country’s first mass-produced EV—Reva. The writer introduces Reva in the book through Kapil Sibal, who as a Union minister in 2009, listed out this EV besides several other cars in his nomination papers for the Lok Sabha elections. 

Mr Sasi makes an important point with reference to Reva — the need to sufficiently nurture a technological pioneer as was the case with Tesla in the US or BYD in China. Founded by Chetan Maini in 1994, Reva Electric Car Company produced the first urban electric micro car in 2001. That was seven years before Tesla launched its maiden car Roadster, he points out, adding that Reva was way ahead of its time. The government’s policy stance on EVs at that juncture is brought out candidly. Ahead of the Reva launch at ₹2.5 lakh in 2001, the government doubled the excise duty on EVs and removed the subsidy of ₹75,000 that was in place. After a series of ups and downs at Reva, Mahindra & Mahindra bought a majority stake in it in 2010. 

If Mr Sasi brings in Kapil Sibal to put Reva in context, he gets Union Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari into the book to talk about the evolution of the EV policy. He lists out the range of green vehicles used by Mr Gadkari. 

In terms of policy, the goals towards an EV transition are clear but the pathway to achieve these need greater clarity, the author points out. The book juxtaposes measures such as reduction in goods and services tax (GST) and incentive schemes such as the FAME (Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Hybrid and Electric Vehicles) with the high cost of setting up charging infrastructure and consumer anxieties about EVs. Batting for the hybrid technology, Mr Sasi says it’s being increasingly viewed as a viable intermediate measure in the transition towards an electric future.     

Providing an all-round historical perspective on EVs, this book is meant for those with academic interest in the subject. To the larger question on India’s concrete EV plan, there isn’t a clear answer yet, as the writer himself suggests.