No success in electrifying trucks and buses yet: Hanif Qureshi

India hasn’t been successful in countering the electrification of buses and trucks which contribute to the majority of pollution, Dr Hanif Qureshi, Additional Secretary, MHI (Ministry of Heavy Industries), Government of India, said.

He added that NITI Aayog’s estimation of 49% CAGR from 2021-2023 cannot happen without electrifying trucks and buses. “They are going to be a major source of energy guzzling, and if we look at the proportion of pollution coming from trucks and buses, that’s an area which we’ve not been very successful in countering,” Dr Hanif Qureshi said at EVOLVE 2024, organised by Amara Raja Energy & Mobility in Hyderabad.

The government had launched an e-bus program where 50,000 e-buses were targeted to be put on the road. “We have about 23 lakh buses out of which only 1.5 lakh are of the STUs (State Transport Undertaking) and the rest are of private sector. We have about 12,000 electric buses which are on the road in India now which is a good beginning but certainly a very small pie of the entire cake. The government is also thinking about how to increase the adoption of electric trucks for long haul applications. There’s a great market potential for electric buses and e trucks,” he added. 

Going forward, batteries required for electric buses will be an area to watch out for as the demand for stationary storage as well as batteries for e-mobility and consumer electronics is going to rise very fast at around 200-250 GW, he said.

Managing the effect on the grid

One of the challenges in the process of electrifying buses and trucks will be to manage its effect on the grid, he said. “We’ve set a target of 500 GW of renewable capacity by 2030 and we’ve crossed 40% of installed capacity already. Last year we had 78% of energy produced from coal because of the low PLF (plant load factor) of wind and solar. If that has to change, we need stationary battery storage. We also have to take into account what effect will electrification of buses and trucks have on the grid,” he said.

Qureshi estimates EVs to make up around 8% of the load on the grid by 2030. In cities where the concentration of EVs would be higher, the number will increase to about 15%. “The effect on the grid on the city scale will be a lot. How can that be managed? One way is that since all discoms have variable rates of power, they will disincentivise the peak times. But the key would be to go in for energy storage and vehicle to grid solutions. The government and private sector together need to address these challenges,” he said.

The demand for the advance chemistry cells is going to be a very aggressive demand for the auto components industry to grow. According to him, changes in the technology will decide the course of future action. “That’s why government schemes are technology agnostic.

The PLI ACC scheme is not limited to lithium ion. If we want to look at the drivers of the growth of the automobile industry, it will not only be EVs, it will have to be advanced automotive technology components, like ADAS, and sunroof and that’s what the PLI scheme targets. That’s why out of 85 companies, 67 are component makers,” he noted.