Good Car’s Co-Founder Anton shares his experience and some of the many highlights being part of the recent Smart Energy delegation to India.
The whole world has to decarbonise its transport. And the world's largest country, India, is forging its own EV pathway. This year 1 million new EV’s will land on India's roads, but perhaps it's not what you think?Recently I had the pleasure to join the Smart Energy Councils delegation to India. Apart from watching the first day of the fourth test in Ahmedabad ;) my mission was to understand the Indian EV ecosystem and what might be learnt for Australia and other countries.
India is now on-roading around 1 million EV’s per annum, compared to around 30,000 each year in Australia. That's a massive number, however, the key thing is that in India EV really does mean “Electric Vehicle”. The vast majority of EV’s hitting the road are scooters “2 wheelers (2W)” and to a lesser degree “3 wheelers (3W)” AKA auto rickshaw or tuk tuks. Each month a cluster of EV 2W manufacturers including OLA, TVS, HERO and ATHER are putting around 100,000 EV scooters on the road. These are truly affordable, with the India sticker price of around $2,500 each! This is mass manufacturer of affordable EV’s and the manufacturing capacity is scaling at an audacious rate.
Electrification of transport on a massive scale!
Ola is the most ambitious enterprise operating in this space. Ola started as a rideshare platform similar to Uber. Over the last few years it has pivoted dramatically to manufacturing EV’s. We visited their “Future factory” in Pochampalli. This facility was constructed and was delivering completed vehicles after just 11 months. Using a high degree of automation and precision engineering their current facility is delivering a vehicle every 40 seconds. The factory has expansion plans to increase production out to an EV every 2 seconds! That's around 10 million EV’s per year from a single factory. However even at this rate it would take a single factory 140 years to produce an EV for every Indian! That's why they are working on plans to build further factories for different 2 wheelers and 4 wheelers as well as a battery manufacturing Gigafactory , all this at a scale I’m not sure considered yet in Australia. It’s an amazing vision being delivered.
EV’s benefitting from the Tech Startup Ecosystem
The EV industry is also benefiting from the tech/startup ecosystem that has catapulted India into being one of the leading developers in the world. We had the pleasure to visit NASSCOM 10,000 startups in Bangalore who are 9 years into a 10 year plan to develop 10,000 startups. A number of these are leaning into the EV space, with companies creating awesome EV smarts in Charger deployment, Demand Management and Fleet Management. The next EV killer app, may well be conceived and coded in Bangalore.
And the funky stuff.
There is a whole manufacturing segment for micro-cars that exists in India (and Europe). Small vehicles that are used for city mobility are classified similar to a motorcycle, rather than requiring the box and dice safety protections of a full sized vehicle
We had the pleasure of visiting KP of PMV Electric. They are working on a tiny city smart car. This thing is super space efficient, fits 3 people into it and takes up the parking space of a motorcycle. For Angels out there he is working on investment to start unit production and would love to chat ;) Even the oldest 3 wheelers are getting the modern treatment with EV conversions and new EV builds of the Auto Rickshaw. This photo is of a 100% electric 3 wheeler I took for a spin in Delhi. What a hoot, although I would love to see the braking system meet this millennium.
Carshare has also got an EV reboot. A company called Blu Smart Mobility is a 100% electric urban mobility solution. With a focus on cleanliness and on time pickup Blu Smart is gaining a strong and loyal following in the cities its active in. Notably they have separated the car ownership from the driver!