HYDERABAD: Electric Vehicle (EV) mobility is presented as the poster child for India’s push towards a cleaner form of public mobility. Those operating in the EV sector often debate on the merits and demerits of adopting a charging point or a battery swapping mechanism for charging EVs. But researchers on battery life say EV battery technology is at a nascent stage and is decades away from being commercially viable.
“It takes a few hours to charge a vehicle at a charging point, so it’s not practical for an EV car owner to wait for a few hours every time the car needs a charge,” said Subash KV, project director (EV division) Versatile Auto Components. “The alternate option is to go for a battery swapping mechanism, where the EV owner goes to an outlet, much like a fuel pump, and swaps his empty battery for a charged one, but setting up such a distribution network for batteries can expensive,” he added. Prashant Bachu, an Urban Transport specialist from Gear Change laid out three fundamental problems associated with EV adoption in the country.
“It is generally assumed that EVs will bring down emissions, but in India, we make electricity using coal and more EV means burning more coal. This will increase air pollution from the cities to where the coal power plant is located,” said Bachu. “The obvious choice would be to use solar energy for electricity generation but we are 50 years away from shifting to solar completely.
We should spend time on improving our solar technology than jumping into EV bandwagon,” he added. The battery technology used by most EV makers is imported, which has pushed up battery costs. These batteries use nickel-metal hydride, lithium-ion, Li-ion polymer-based batteries. The metals used are rare and are mostly imported from China. “From being dependant on oil from the Gulf countries, we will merely switch our dependency to China,” quipped Bachu.