ISSUE 12 | DECEMBER 2019
Approaches for creating effective charging infrastructure
are outlined below.
(2) Increasing efficiency of vehicles : Incentivising
developments to increase vehicle efficiency, thereby
reducing energy consumption, can enable to a vehicle to
travel the same distance on a smaller battery pack. Energy
efficiency can be enhanced by using more efficient electric
motors using better tyres, enhancing the aero dynamics of
the vehicles and reducing it's weight. This would reduce
size needed for a certain range. For the second approach,
reducing the unit costs of each battery, India can explore
several pathways:
(a) Selecting appropriate battery chemistries : As
batteries dominate costs of electric vehicles, the strategy
would be to use battery chemistry with optimized cost and
performance at Indian temperatures. India should
encourage manufacturing of such battery cell in India.
India is already making battery (cell to pack).
(b) Exploring new battery chemistries : Focusing on
materials like lithium, manganese, nickel, cobalt and
graphite that are used in batteries and determine it's costs.
While it is important to secure mines which produce these
materials, India must also obtain these battery materials
through recycling of used batteries and should aim to
become the capital of "urban mining" of used batteries.
There are three parts to battery production. First is battery
pack development, which should be done immediately.
Second is cell manufacturing.
There are a number of companies which are setting up
manufacturing units in India as a joint venture. It should
ideally take upto two or three years to start cell
manufacturing. The third is raw material sourcing. Lithium,
cobalt, manganese, nickel - for that, it is essential to
recycle old batteries. Even cell phone batteries, which is
lithium ion could be recycled. Indians throw away 300
million cell phone batteries. If recycled and extracted, we
can expect to recover 90 % of lithium, cobalt, manganese,
nickel and graphite. Beyond reducing battery costs, India
can explore potential avenues of fiscal support for EVs to
accelerate adoption.
The standard approach in other countries to providing
fiscal support to EVs has been direct subsidization. For
example, EVs in USA, Europe and China have up to 40 %
"all-in" subsidies. Those subsidies include direct federal or
state subsidy to buyers, mandates to manufacturers, utility
subsidies or subsidy in the form of fee bates where
vehicles are taxed based on their CO2 emissions, whereas
EV receives support. As costs decline and the share EVs
in total vehicles increases, most nations plan to taper off
such subsidies. For India, however, those paths are not
viable; the elimination of direct subsidy will be the policy
basis.
BIKERS CLUB ® | MAGAZINE | PAGE 41
Therefore India has to be creative to make electric vehicles
and it's infrastructure economically viable from the very
beginning. It's policy and strategy have to be
fundamentally set up to enable EVs to make business
sense. India would recognize battery swapping and battery
charging as addressing different segments of vehicles and
two equally valid options that industry may choose to use.
Business that provide charging / swapping would
be referred to as Energy Operators (EO).
They would deploy slow and fast chargers at suitable
locations for EVs. Similarly, they would purchase batteries,
setup charging and swapping service and provide the
charged batteries on lease for EVs. Both the charging as
well as swapping service would require that EVs have
standard charging protocols to connect to a charger of
swappable batteries and have a standardized connector.
Government of India would consider providing long-term
and short-term tax-incentives and faster depreciation as
incentives to EOs for deploying slow / fast chargers and
carrying out battery swapping. GST for all these chargers
and swappers should be the same as that for the vehicles.
Swappable vehicle batteries and vehicles without batteries
(which receive swappable batteries) should also be treated
the same under GST. However, Public-charging
infrastructure is an important complement to home-
chargers.
article by Advait Nambiar
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