Tyre Asia April/May 2018 25
petrol and diesel engine is
practicable?
India is not an isolated market from the
world but we do feel it’s an ambitious
target. We hope that we will have
an electric revolution in our country.
However, today it’s still early to say how
the technology evolves in India. But
seeing the proactive approach and vision
of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, we
can be confident about EV development
getting on the fast track. EV penetration
may grow going forward. This may be
because of enforcement or interest/
need of the Indian consumers. The
enforcement can be due to rising traffic
or rising pollution in the urban centres
and the need may be due to cheaper
running cost. Seeing the excitement of
OEMs in India, we can be confident that
we may have frugal electric technology
in the next decade in Indian cars which
may provide enormous value to the
consumer. If the Indian consumers find
the electric cars easy on their pocket
in terms of fuel efficiency/cost, then we
may see a complete shift of consumers
to electric cars. Also in the past, we have
seen that the Indian consumers were
quite quick to react to the market price
dynamics, for example when diesel fuel
prices went down due to fuel subsidy.
We have then seen sales of diesel cars
going up and reaching 60% penetration.
This is in spite of the fact that diesel cars
were around Rs 100,000 more expensive
than the petrol variants.
Do you think there will
be a surge in foreign
collaborations to produce,
powertrains, specialty tyres
and joint ventures in EVs
in the light of government’s
proposed electrification
programmed?
Yes, collaboration will be the key. A lot
of investment is needed and that too in a
short span of time. This makes a win-win
scenario for everybody if OEMs work
together and create a technology which
is more efficient and consumers can
use a common charging infrastructure.
It is critical for the success of EVs that
we have a lot of standardization in cars,
infra etc. Also markets like China have
taken a big leap and we can benefit by
collaborating with their local players.What are the priorities in
terms of taxes, subsidies and
infrastructure to hasten the
electrification programme?
I think we should not expect a lot from
the Indian government in term of subsidy
on electric vehicles. The priorities of
the government will always be health,
education, infra etc. But we strongly
feel that the government has created a
big gap between tax structure of Electric
cars and diesel/petrol cars.What are the bottlenecks that
you see coming in the way
of the smooth transition to
electrification in the Indian
EV sector?
The challenge to 100% EV penetration
can be many. We feel that public
charging infra may not be sufficient
so consumers have to buy their own
fast charging equipment. Please note
that the Indian customer is very price
sensitive so any additional cost where
consumers have to invest like cost of
charging/fast charging equipment can be
a big deterrent to EV purchase decision.
Secondly, in India the yearly running of
vehicle is very less; may be around 8k in
gasoline cars annually. Life of battery
may be 3-4 years which would mean the
consumer has to shell out more money
per km which can be an expensive
proposition. Also, in India a majority
of consumers are happy with low
performance/low speed vehicles as focus
is always to get high mileage car rather
than speed so even lower IC engine may
continue and may be cheaper in price.
Also, EVs are still not considered as a
status/pride to buy in India so this may
not encourage rich people to go for EV.
Another challenge is that there are no
proper parking places even in residential
areas so charging at home is also a
difficult option in metros. Also, players
like Suzuki, which is a leader in India,
don’t have access to good R&D in electric
cars. So they may be more interested in
driving gasoline cars and may always
influence government policies. Lower
oil prices in the long term may be a
deterrent to growth of EV in India.I
ndia will come up with a
mandate on EV this year
and every manufacturer
will have to have an EV in
its portfolio. We feel the
government may take a
softer approach and start
with around 3% mandatory
EV from 2020/21