With rising pollution levels and rapidly depleting air quality contributing 14 percent to overall global emissions, the global automotive industry is doing its bit to drive away from conventional propulsion means and take to newer technologies.

While vehicle electrification has the potential to emerge as a solution for a sustainable tomorrow, it, however, cannot be bracketed as the one-size-fits-all solution.

Discussing the various challenges and opportunities that lie in the path to a cleaner tomorrow, key Indian industry stakeholders came together at a common platform at a seminar on ‘Responsible Mobility for Safe, Sustainable and Green Society’ organised by FICCI in New Delhi today, and shed light on some of the critical imperatives that are driving the industry forward.

India, with its sizeable parc of over 180 million vehicles and a diverse landscape, needs its own set of tailor-made solutions to the country's mobility problems. While China is confidently charting its way into an era of electric mobility, India, with 75 percent of the market skewed towards affordable small cars sold at an average price point of under Rs 500,000, and over 70 percent of the country's power generation relying on coal, is not exactly the right fit for e-mobility.

According to Shekar Viswanathan, chairman, FICCI Electric Vehicle Committee and vice-chairman and whole time director, Toyota Kirloskar Motor, “While choosing new propulsion technologies for India, we have to look holistically from a complete vehicle lifecycle perspective and not just be satisfied by bringing down the tailpipe emissions. Moreover, the sustainable technologies should also be relevant to support the entire automotive ecosystem in the country.” 

Speaking at the seminar, Babul Supriyo, minister of state, Ministry of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises (pictured above), said, “The government has taken a major step by skipping BS V emission standards and directly jumping to BS VI norms. With India’s annual fuel import bills being in the range of US$ 120 billion, the FAME subsidy, which was initiated in 2015, has been a step towards a cleaner future.”

The subsidy, which has benefited over 150,000 passenger cars in India until now, is now ready to enter its next phase with the FAME II policy set to be introduced from April 1, 2018 but sees a challenge to include XEVs, other than full electrics into its ambit.

According to a BCG study, XEVs (smart hybrids, plug-ins and battery electrics) are estimated to together comprise up to 35 to 40 percent of the global vehicle population by 2030, with Europe bringing in the maximum contribution of BEVs at 22 percent, followed by the US (20%), China (17%) and Japan (12%).

“A full spectrum of XEV products is going to be offered across various global markets, and in India too, a wide variety of options like BEVs, PHEVs, SHEV and IC-engined vehicles will cater to different needs and purposes and have the potential of co-existing in the future,” said Sharad Verma, senior partner, BCG.

India, with its low average driving distances of around 16,000km a year, cheap vehicle maintenance charges and distribution losses of close to 20 percent, lags far behind than other developed markets like the US, where these factors are considerably higher and make EVs favourable in terms of their lower total cost of ownership.

“The total cost of ownership can be brought down by critically driving localisation of XEVs to establish competitiveness and drive volumes growth, which will then lead to their low acquisition costs,” Verma added.

“The government needs to optimise spends and provide the initial support to the industry at critical stages and help aggressive localisation so that there is price competitiveness of BEVs over the next five to seven years. Indian industry needs to invest on design and local manufacturing of battery and electric drivetrain components for the success of BEVs in the country,” he added.

Risk of lithium dependency
While rare-earth metals make up 60 percent of the total battery composition and contribute only 2 percent of the weight, the concentration can go down to 40 percent with new research being carried out at the elemental level in the battery technology space. However, the government is wary that India, which isn't a wealthy nation in terms of Li-ion reserves, would have to import large quantities of lithium if it were to follow a complete electrification roadmap. This would mean that the import cost for lithium would be substantially high and similar to that of crude oil; this would also defeat the purpose of substituting fossil fuels at a lesser cost. 

According to Vishvajit Sahay, joint secretary, Department of Heavy Industries, “With the rare-earth lithium being a critical element in the future of BEVs, there is going to be a combination of different propulsion technologies which will play their part and co-exist to solve the mobility demands of the country in the coming future.”  

Dr K Balasubramanian, director, Non-Ferrous Materials Technology Development Centre, (NFTDC), said: “India has already made a lot of progress in localising electric motors. Now, we need to localise batteries and the associated power electronics.”

“Significant investments to the tune of US$ 1.2 billion will be required to set up cell and battery manufacturing plants in the country to power the entire vehicle fleet of the nation,” said Dr Balasubramanian. “Even with localisation of the controllers and the battery pack assembly, battery costs are not going to fall below US$ 140, making battery electrics not viable for mass market proliferation in India,” he added.

Strong regulations required for motors and controllers
While electric two-wheelers, three-wheelers and buses are the low-hanging fruits and are going to be the fastest to adopt battery electric technology for propulsion in the future, hybrids make for a strong case for themselves and prove to be extremely relevant to significantly scale up vehicle efficiency by cutting down fuel consumption by up to 50 percent.

“On the other hand, the government needs to quickly come up with very strong regulations for vehicle hybridisation and electrification in India and power electronics need to be localised in India by the components manufacturing industry as we have the right talent to come up with such components,” said Dr Balasubramanian.

Ajay Mathur, director general, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), said: “India’s current electricity generation capacity is 330GW, but close to 70 percent of that is dependent on coal. With the current grid capacity in India, even if 10 percent of the total vehicle parc was to shift to electric technology, the grid would collapse at its peak load.”

Full electrics would largely be dependent on battery technology as well as charging infrastructure. The cost differential between IC-engined vehicles and electrified vehicles is going to be a key challenge towards acceptability of XEVs.

“While Li-ion is the most suitable battery technology for application in the automotive space in the present day, the research in the space is going to spawn other forms including sodium sulphur, which will bring down dependency on lithium alone.”

“In case of BEVs, different battery technologies will be used for multiple usage patterns, with Li-ion, lead-acid and sodium sulphur types catering to different needs of the market and be available at varying price points,” Dr Mathur concluded.