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PEOPLE & TRENDS MOUSHUMI MOHANTY E lectrification is here, but it’s on two and three wheels, not four,” says Moushumi Mohanty, head of the Electric Mobility Programme at the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), a New Delhi-based think-tank. “The government is providing large subsidies to the two- and three-wheeler segments and together they will lead the coun- try’s electric mobility goals in the short-to-medium-term.” Motorcycles and three-wheelers — mostly e-rickshaws — are rela- tively cheap, popular and have low power requirements, making them ideal candidates for electrification on a large scale. More than half of the Indian government’s subsidy package designed to speed up the manufacturing and adoption of electric vehicles is aimed at two- and three-wheelers. The Indian Government does not lack ambition. It wants 30 per cent of new vehicle sales to be electric by 2030, a target that would require the electric vehicle (EV) sector to expand at an annual rate of 46 per cent, right up to the target date. At first glance that looks plau- sible, at least for two and three- wheelers. Between 2011 and 2019, the electric two-wheeler market grew at an annual rate of 19 per cent, while the electric three- wheeler market expanded at a rate of 73 per cent, according to the CSE. However, these gains were from an almost standing start, and they become harder to reproduce as the market becomes larger. Despite all that rapid growth, the market for EVs remains tiny in r elation to that of combustion engines. Two-wheelers made up more than 84 per cent of EV registrations in 2021, yet they have just a 0.15 per cent market share of the total market for two-, three- and four-wheelers. That makes reach- ing the government’s 2030 t arget a tall order. “The numbers aren’t quite so impressive yet, but we do expect Right: The Yulu Miracle bikes are available for rent for last-mile con- nectivity at metro stations. Commuters rent them from one Yulu zone and drop them at another. 26 | 2.2022 T·TIME PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES them to take off over the next two to three years,” says Mohanty. Expanding EV adoption is partly about product availability — one of the many “chicken and egg” situations that have challenged the expansion of the electric vehicle sector g lobally. Producers often want g uarantees that a deep pool of demand exists before they will ramp up production, while consum- ers need to have genuine choice to be able to purchase in large enough numbers. Mohanty says that the same has historically been the case for charging infrastructure, with W W W.T R E L L E B O R G . C O M
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PEOPLE & TRENDS MOUSHUMI MOHANTY stakeholders reluctant to invest for small numbers of EV owners. “It requires the producer and the consumer to spend on the new tech- nology for it to gain traction, then the momentum kicks in,” she adds. “There have been some big commit- ments made to developing charg- ing infrastructure and clearly the numbers have to be much larger, but India is working on it.” Momentum is indeed building. Last year, electric scooter manufac- turer Ola pledged to spend 2 billion USD on a factory in the southeastern W W W.T R E L L E B O R G . C O M “It will be back and forth, back, and forth. I mean, that’s how it is, right? You learn and you tweak, and you change, and you move.” Moushumi Mohanty, head of the Electric Mobility Programme at the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) T·TIME 2.2022 | 27
