ELECTRIC VEHICLES : FUTURE IS HERE, INFRASTRUCTURE ISN'T.

Tesla has entered in India & registered itself as a company in Bengaluru, as "Tesla India Motors & Energy Private Limited" a classified subsidiary of a foreign company with an authorised share capital of ₹15 Lakh & Paid-up capital of ₹1 Lakh. That is surely one of the on-going talks among petrolheads and automobile experts. While that's something to be excited & pumped up about few people are suggesting, Tesla will be launching it's 1st Electric Vehicle around March 2021 which will be Tesla Model 3, catching everyone's attention towards the future of mobility. Obviously Tesla's entry will give major boost to strengthen EV infrastructure, overall development, even new government policies which might encourage other manufacturers to take a leap forward.

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THINGS WE ARE FORGETTING

• Tesla by no means is a affordable car, they are known for the premium experience they provide. Few people are way to excited for the launch as if they are buying it straight away. Tesla Model 3 is expected at the price of ₹60 Lakh.

• Tesla Autopilot, this is hands down one of the coolest features, but Autopilot seems very unlikely in early days given the treacherous condition of Indian roads and the people driving on it. Obviously they have to do alot of R&D and adapt autopilot according to the conditions, after all that, government gets to decide if or if not it's safe for people on the road. 

• The Autopilot/Self-driving features are all based on street signs, speed limits and lane allocation on the road, all of those are very questionable in all parts of the country. So it doesn't completely depends upon Tesla whether they can successfully implement Self-driving features.

• It took Tesla Motors around two decade to be this successfully, there were times when Elon Musk wanted to sell Tesla Motors to Apple Inc. If you aren't aware Apple has been working on its own electric car since 2014 and they struggled miserably in 2015 and in 2016 Musk came up with a offer of selling Tesla for $60 Billion when they (Tesla) were struggling to get Model 3 under production, Apple's CEO refused to take meeting with Elon and in December 2020 Tesla was worth $616 Billion, over 10 times the offered buyout.

During the darkest days of the Model 3 program, I reached out to Tim Cook to discuss the possibility of Apple acquiring Tesla (for 1/10 of our current value). He refused to take the meeting.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 22, 2020

 

OVERALL SHIFT TO ELECTRIC TRANSPORTATION

Tesla may or may not release their Model 3 in March 2021 but one thing to keep in mind is they won't be the first mass produced EV in India, Giants like Tata, Mahindra, Mercedes, Hyundai, MG have already launched EV's at prices ranging from ₹9 Lakh to ₹1 Cr. Also Electric Vehicles are not all about cars it's also about bikes & scooters and there are bikes ranging from ₹40K upto ₹1 Lakh from brands like Hero, Bajaj, Revolt, Ather. When you consider all of these you can see there is a healthy amount of competition in the market for EV. Public transportation is also adopting Electric-Busses in cities, in 2019 Pune was the first city in the country to go for all Electric Bus Programme and ran it successfully.

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As of now there are 350+ charging station across the country, while as a part of ' Make India an Electric Vehicle Nation by 2030 ' Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari has announced to set up 69k E-Charging spots at petrol stations across India. Electric vehicles are the future whether you like them or not, the automotive industry is trying very hard to make make efficient Electric Motors that give good range and consume less energy. 

Report says to meet the charging requirement for 20 Lakh electric cars, India needs about 4 Lakh charging stations installed by 2026.

One of the biggest pros of Electric Vehicles is you can charge them at your home @240 Volts just like you plugin your smartphones or laptops, and you will be good to go.

All that can only be said to the land based transportation services, Aviation is one of the biggest contributors to carbon emissions, and the issue will only continue to grow. The most realistic zero-emission planes will be electric. The concept is similar to electric cars, but in the air. Instead of using traditional fuel to power a plane, which releases large amount of pollution, electric planes use large batteries that are chargeable and provide a powerful and clean flight. But all that future is way to far, in coming 20 years we might see Electric Airplane based on rechargeable batteries but only those plane's that travel short distance and carrying less than 100 passengers. If you ask about helicopters well there is a flying prototype name SIKORSKY S-300C, world's first all Electric helicopters. It's engine is replaced by an electric motor & 2 lithium ion battery packs, the helicopter can hold only the pilot, no passengers & flies for about 15 minutes, & that is were problems start to kick in.

ELECTRIC VEHICLES BATTERIES

An Electric-vehicle Battery (EVB) is a battery used to power the electric motors of a Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) or Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV). These batteries are usually rechargeable batteries, and are typically lithium-ion batteries. These batteries are specifically designed for a high ampere-hour (or kilowatt-hour) capacity.

Batteries for electric vehicles are characterized by their relatively high power-to-weight ratio, specific energy and energy density; smaller, lighter batteries are desirable because they reduce the weight of the vehicle and therefore improve its performance. Compared to liquid fuels, most current battery technologies have much lower specific energy, and this often impacts the maximum all-electric range of the vehicles.

The most obvious is battery power. While today’s batteries seem to be effective, they aren’t powerful enough to be used in anything more than a small plane that only flies short distances. Batteries need to be smaller and lighter before they can be used on commercial planes. Fuel is very dense and includes a lot of energy in a relatively small space and weight, which batteries need to be able to match or improve.

If you see the image below you can see how batteries are stacked on a car and a bike. And you can clearly see the difference in size of the battery. In a car batteries are layed on the floor, spread out much wider because there is space to do that.

While on a bike there already less space to explore, everything is compact and remains that way. Which directly effect the range that can be covered, see on a regular feul based car covering 25KMPL having a full tank capacity of 35 Litres gives you total range of 875 kms to make it look reasonable let's say we drop the efficiency from 25 KMPL to 20 KMPL the total range goes down to 700 kms on full tank. A Electric car with full charge lasts you upto 180 Kms (both compared are budget cars under ₹10 lakh) Tesla Model 3 2021 full range plus model brings 570 Kms, still 130 kms shy to the feul based budget car. Now you see the numbers say a story but let's also look at 2 wheelers, a feul based bike costing around 1 Lakh, covering 50 KMPL and has 15 L tank, for fair calculation let's drop the it to 40 KMPL that bike is covering range of 600 kms, now a Electric bike costing ₹1Lakh ranges 150 kms. Okay let's say the number are way to much in favour of petrol based vehicles and some people might say people willing to spend ₹70-₹80 Lakhs aren't concerned about the money they might spend on petrol or charging, milega is just a number that doesn't matter, but they sure do care about the time they might spend on charging those batteries. But for people with budget concerns they sure do care about money and range.

Will An Electric Vehicle Add to Your Electricity Bill?

Short answer will be Yes. Any device, appliance or machine that draws electricity will add to your electric bill. Electric vehicles must be plugged-in and charged up regularly to run. Definately it also depends on the usage of car 

If electricity costs ₹8 per kilowatt-hour, charging an all-electric vehicle with a 112 Km range (assuming a fully depleted 24 kWh battery) will cost about ₹194 to reach a full charge. (All this are assumed numbers but you get a rough calculation of what it might cost you if you are covering about 100 Km)

Pros

• Regenerative Braking is an energy recovery mechanism that slows down a moving vehicle or object by converting its kinetic energy into a form that can be either used immediately or stored until needed. In this mechanism, the electric traction motor uses the vehicle's momentum to recover energy that would otherwise be lost to the brake discs as heat. But this isn't a big regeneration of energy it's a minimal yet you can notice it, every car will have different number but for assumption let's say you choose to decent down a mountain with zigzag turns and you are braking quite alot the and you cover about 10 Kms, at the bottom of the mountain you might have 5-6 kW worth of energy.
  
  
  

• Petrol is quite expensive, so fuelling a petrol car is often more expensive. Gas rates vary all the time and electric rate is generally stable & affordable.

• The main advantage, of Electric cars is that they are energy efficient, and they very good for the environment either.

Cons

• The main disadvantage of electric cars is that you have to charge them for a fairly long time, sometimes overnight to get the power you need for a journey.

• For maximum energy efficiency you have to drive the car/bike at a constant speed of 40-45 Kmph which is a downside considering you have all the deployment in your hand at once and can go up the speed in no time.

• Battery degradation of Lithium-ion batteries more than age and actual use. Charging Li-ion batteries beyond 80% can drastically accelerate battery degradation. Due to this degradation you might have to change the battery pack in future which won't be pocket friendly at all.

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• Time is a big factor, and charging time is even bigger factory. You can buy fast chargers which would still cost you 100-120 mins for full charge and you can go to public super chargers which cost you about 20-30 mins for 70-80% . Downside being you have to plan it before you even leave the house.

All that being said to conclude it I will say buy EV's if you want to but there's alot of third party factor you will have to consider before making a purchase . Obviously you contribute to decrease the carbon emissions at the smallest number. But if you are considering to buy your very first vehicles ever I would say buy much more reliable tried and tested gas based cars much easier to maintain and repair compared to rare, exclusive and expensive parts of EV that are only available at your company service centers. The problem will be as of now E-Charging station are very less, it won't be a problem in 6-7 years but until then EV will be very risky, and petrol isn't gonna just disappeared all of a sudden, it's safe to say petrol will be a thing for 2 decades atleast. Alternate feuls are still a option Electric won't be the only option.