Energetica India - June 2020

ELECTRIC VEHICLE India EV Ecosystem: Present Trends & Future Opportunities India will be forced to support the ailing conventional automotive industries, so as to not be seen as forcing in another disruption. Nonetheless, India will see a significant focus on clean mobility and an increase in adoption of electric vehicles. And this is already visible in the rising number of discussions; companies like us are having in this space. The clearer skies and the cleaner air in even the worst polluting cities have pushed people to have clean mobility as part of their purchase consideration. Unknown to many, the Electric Vehicle industry in India actually got off to an early start with Chetan Maini’s brainchild - REVA in 2001. This was followed by the famous Yo bike which was launched in 2006 by Electrotherm India Limited (EIL). There was hope that Electric mobility will kick off with this great start in India but did not really take off until recently. While there were a lot of technical and other reasons for lack of interest from consumers, one of the major issues was the lack of intent from the government to push the clean mobility revolution until 2017. In 2017 the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH), under the aegis of honourable Union Minister Shri Nitin Gadkari, took active interest in pushing the clean mobility mission in India. Shri Nitin Gadkari can be given the credit for single-handedly making EV an often-discussed subject in the corridors of power and company board rooms. But as an industry stalwart said at an EV conclave in 2018, ‘2017 was the year of EV talk and no walk’. By end of 2019, it was getting clear that the growth of EV in India will be on the back of electric 2 wheelers and 3 wheelers. This was validated by the sales figures from Society of Manu - facturers of Electric Vehicles (SMEV). Electric vehicles sales, in India grew by 20 per cent at 1.56 lakh units in 2019-20 driven by two-wheelers. Out of the total sales in FY20, 1.52 lakh units were two-wheelers, 3,400 cars and 600 buses. This figure did not include the approximately 90,000 e-rickshaws plying in the unorganized sector. Just while the uptake in EV had started, COVID-19 struck like bolt out of the blue to the global economy and to the automotive industry in particular. So, the question is what happens to the EV industry in India? AC 2021 stands for After COVID, which defines the inflection to the new normal for all of us and for all industries worldwide, including Mobilityand electric mobility in particular. The new normal in mobility is ‘Closed-in’ as opposed to ‘Open- out’, ‘Private’ as opposed to ‘Public’, ‘Individual’ as opposed to ‘Shared’. The mobility industry which was on the cusp of completely transitioning to a shared mobility platform finds itself stacked against this new normal. This new normal is not only limited to our reaction to the COVID-19 situation here and now, but our preparedness forfuture pandemics. One of the biggest impacts to mobility will be on the back of change in consumer’s mobility behaviour. In general, people will prefer to either working from home or at best finding employment closest to home. Unwarranted travel will be restricted. This will drive down urban mobility which is largely a home-office-home segment. In turn, this will push the growth of ‘localised-indi- vidual’ transport options such as walking, cycling, biking (In the Indian context, biking means motorised 2-wheelers) which can already be seen in the Chinese post-pandemic personal transport resurgence. energetica INDIA- June_2020 33 Maxson Lewis MD, Magenta Power