* Uber/Ola do not own cars, and the owners take out loans to get one. Electric cars can be expensive to be financed for that income group. Uber's endgame is to own self-driving cars and not a normal car, atleast that was the dream :).
* Indian car companies do not have electric cars (a real car can go for atleast 200kms a charge/refill).
* A car factory(even non-electric) would take atleast 5 years to start churning cars.
* Even in that case, it will have to import 40% of the cost ie batteries as India cannot make them. If it starts today, it can in 10 years.
* Import duties of fully assembled, SKD and CKD electric cars is very high makes them uncompetitive to petrol/diesel cars.
* Direct importing is not viable as it requires certification.
* 60% of India's electric supply is coal based.
And to top it;
* Upto 50% of pollution a car will cause is done during production of the car ie before even a kilometre has been driven. Replacing lots of good working cars from the street is not environment friendly.
The point that many people make: "* Upto 50% of pollution a car will cause is done during production of the car ie before even a kilometre has been driven. Replacing lots of good working cars from the street is not environment friendly."
It is not just overall pollution, but where and how it is done that it is important. There is a huge difference between controlled pollution, from a factory away from large cities, and thousands of cars spewing emissions right into the core of urban centers. The second would cause more direct health issues and potentially deaths and overall unpleasantness.
> The point that many people make: "* Upto 50% of pollution a car will cause is done during production of the car ie before even a kilometre has been driven. Replacing lots of good working cars from the street is not environment friendly."
You're completely wrong. This may be the case for a weekend vehicle that is sent to the junkyard before you put 30,000 km on it, but is 100% wrong for a taxi, that drives >300,000 miles over its life.
It takes 6-12 tonnes of CO2e to produce a car. [1]
Taking 35 mpg, every 10,000 miles driven is 285 gallons of gasoline. 1 gallon of gasoline produces ~8.9 kg of CO2e. That's 2.5 tonnes per 10,000 miles driven.
After 50,000 miles driven, the typical car breaks even with its manufacturing emissions.
The average taxi (in NYC) puts on 70,000 miles. Per YEAR. [2] In a single year, it's fuel emissions exceed manufacturing emissions.
If you want good return-on-investment, taxis are the first vehicles we should be regulating. They drive a lot more than the average car.
Electric cars produce more CO2 during manufacturing.
Indian taxis/cars on Indian roads do worse.
India's electric market is 60% coal.
"If you want good return-on-investment, taxis are the first vehicles we should be regulating. They drive a lot more than the average car." - Who is the you here? The car driver who is trying to make ends meet?
> Electric cars produce more CO2 during manufacturing.
How much more? Sources, please. The internet tells me that adding an 85 KWH battery in a Tesla adds ~1 tonne of CO2e. [1]
Tesla, as a whole (Which includes non-manufacturing, but does not include the carbon cost, of say, smelting the steel that went into their cars, or Panasonic manufacturing their batteries), produced ~300,000 tonnes of CO2e in 2018. They shipped ~250,000 vehicles in 2018.[2]
Bloomberg claims something completely different, but doesn't provide any concrete numbers. [3] The study it seems to cite is [4], which claims that a Tesla's battery is ~15 tonnes of CO2e, if manufactured in a factory powered by 50% coal power. There seem to be no other studies on the subject.
Panasonic, which manufactures Tesla batteries, is doing some work to make their batteries carbon neutral [5][6]. It's unclear how much volume this factory produces, and what the emissions of their other factories are.
> Indian taxis/cars on Indian roads do worse.
This also means that the existing ICE taxis don't have a long prospective life, and at least 40% of them are due to be replaced by 2026. It's why this legislature is coming into play in 2026, and not in 2020.
> India's electric market is 60% coal.
Thanks to Carnot efficiency, even if your electric car is powered by a coal plant, it is still more carbon efficient than powering it with gasoline. Your V6 engine doesn't reach the temperature differential that utility coal plants do. Electric vehicles also have near-zero-cost regenerative breaking, which increases waste energy, that would otherwise go into heating brakes in a non-hybrid ICE.
> Who is the you here?
Someone who is comparing the environmental benefit to the monetary cost of switching from ICE to electric. You get a lot more reductions, for the same dollar spent, from electrifying taxis, then from electrifying heavily-used personal vehicles. You get more reductions from electrifying heavily-used personal vehicles, then lightly-used weekend vehicles.
Indian cars/manufacturing/importing has different economics and pollution impacts. You are free do your own research and make up your mind.
I am not against electric cars, I want them. I am against the idea to replace cars which have already contributed to significant pollution being removed from road.
The lowest hanging fruit for me is to get US and other top polluters to reduce pollution. India and China are doing good already as they are increasing more green cover. The reality is the India car drivers cannot afford the cheaper electric cars, forget about Tesla.
> Indian cars/manufacturing/importing has different economics and pollution impacts. You are free do your own research and make up your mind.
No, you don't get to go ahead and do that. The burden is on you to provide evidence for your claim, not on the person you are talking to.
> I am against the idea to replace cars which have already contributed to significant pollution being removed from road.
Didn't you say that taxis in India don't last as long as they do in the West? If so, won't it be possible to electrify 40% of them by 2026, through natural attrition? The whole point of this law is to give a heads-up on a multi-year process.
> The lowest hanging fruit for me is to get US and other top polluters to reduce pollution.
Agreed. The West has had modest per-capita pollution reductions, but needs to go much further then that. As does China. (It's overall per-capita pollution has matched that of the European Union. If you look at its urban areas, alone, they pollute just as much, per-capita, as the US.)
China is no longer a developing country. It's a 350-million person developed country, with all the same carbon footprint as any western economy, sitting on top of a 1-billion person developing country.
> India and China are doing good already as they are increasing more green cover
Increasing green cover isn't anywhere close to enough. If we tore down every city, uprooted every field, and covered the entire planet with trees, we'd offset only a few years of global emissions.
Pollution in large facilities like coal-fired power plants can feasibly be controlled using technology that cannot be miniaturized and fitted to the tailpipe of every car.
Coal is not good for the climate, but coal-fired electricity using best available emissions control technology is far, far better for public health and air quality than internal combustion vehicles.
Overall pollution is a real hard problem. Computer top that, local pollution is more like a temporal inconvenience, it will pass (except for its share in overall pollution)
Even if that number is right, I would think that Uber/Ola cars have higher after-production emissions due to them being driven all day and being driven in city settings (as opposed to on a highway where cars are more efficient.)
Does anyone have a release from what the directive actually says? I know the article says cars, but did they maybe mean to say fleets? An “auto” in India could mean an auto-rickshaw (tuk tuk), and you certainly can order those through Uber there. It’d be a lot easier to imagine autos going electric.
Also to the parent’s point about self driving cars as part of Uber’s strategy, while totally valid, I really can’t imagine autonomous vehicles working in the places I’ve been in India. I’ve had drivers hit traffic jams and just literally turn around and drive into oncoming traffic for a while. It’s pretty impressive how traffic flows there — I can’t imagine an autonomous car figuring out how to do it.
There are some electric cars already available or ready to launch (videos available in YouTube): Mahindra e2o, Mahindra eVerito, Tata Tigor, Tata Altroz.
These are some of the electric cars arriving in India this year (at least 11 models): Hyundai Kona, MG ezs, WagonR Electric, Tata Altroz, Tata Nexon, Mahindra eKUV100, Nissan Leaf, Renault Zoe.
And the car size, range and pricing competitive? A VC handing out money to a startup will not usher electric taxis. People will need to start buying them because they are better, cheaper and more powerful.
I want to ask you about some things. But first, you say
>* 60% of India's electric supply is coal based.
The long-term plan is that this all be replaced with non-polluting sources of electricity. But I am assuming you already knew that.
Now what I want to ask you is, if electric cars are a bad idea for reducing co2 pollution, what would you recommend? Or is it your position that anthropogenic climate change is a hoax, and we should just stay on fossil fuels?
Ofcourse I don't; as I am not a climate scientist who is doing research on it. I am from India and am giving a reality check. As for how switch to electric cars, I have answered @ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20117147.
HN threads are for healthy discussions and I would not expect a solution to climate change here.
Your language is aggressive & attacks me personally and I am not going to respond further.
>Replacing lots of good working cars from the street is not environment friendly.
This is generally the reason why most legislation of this type tries to dictate new car sales rather than actual usage. That route would yield slower results, but it is a more efficient approach.
That said, we also need to keep in mind that these electric cars aren't going to be replacing 5 year old vehicles. The strong secondary market allows those used cars to flow down market to push out much older and lower quality vehicles. Those low quality cars are also likely the worse polluters. Think of the Cash For Clunkers program. That was a failure on many levels, but one of the successes was modernizing some of the vehicles on the road which led to both better fuel economy and safety (although I should note that other aspects of the program had negative environmental impacts that might have made the program a net negative overall).
Ola/Uber cars are mostly new taken on loan in India.
China has shown the way to do the transfer. Super high taxes for registration of a petrol/diesel car and free registration for an electric one. Build cars at home and subsidise its components.
No hand-waving required. Just make it more affordable. Let capitalism finish the job.
This comment and your following comment seem to show a reluctance to accept EVs as solution. You haven't considered some major points:
1. "Import duties are high", "Direct import is not viable" - it's the govt we are talking about. They'll HAVE to ease the import to make it work.
2. Vehicles age; and they break down faster on indian roads. Current vehicles will eventually expire and open up space for electrics. no one is going to ask you to smash a new car.
I mentioned the facts and your observations about my personal opinions are incorrect. I want EVs too but the price conscious Indian market won't buy them at current prices/performance.
1. Even the top courts in India have questioned the government on it but the government has no answer. I am not sure what information you have that you can emphasise that it has to. There is no political/public pressure only a marketing one.
2. Exactly! But enforcing of shorter deadlines by government is not going to help anyone and result in a few outrages by the road by the drivers and forgotten by everyone by the next news cycle.
This is what you call a PR thing by Government. Why?
* 2019 - 2026 - That's after (5+2) years which means it makes it easy for this current Government to pitch it before next election.
* Everyone knows Uber and Ola don't own their fleet so who'll be accountable?
* In Bangalore, Ola was banned for a month or so for a policy violation, only to be revoked just in 24 hours citing Public / Traffic / Driver's livelihood.
* Uber and Ola drivers in cities like Bangalore are currently not even getting time for their food (lunch) and for them to sit aside and recharge the car seems another big 'would they ?'
* Any news on Public Policy reg. Internet companies hit front page.
Why not the government make better Public transport system? Why don't they increase the frequency of Government Bus ? Why don't they electrify Public transport?
None of these would hail the Government as Elon Musk ish visionary other than this one.
Everyone knows Uber and Ola don't own their fleet so who'll be accountable?
The Seattle airport requires that ridershare drivers drive cars that get mileage >= 45mpg, and every Uber/Lyft car I've seen picking up at Sea-Tac is a hybrid (almost all Priuses).
So putting car requirements on Uber can be effective even though they don't own their own cars.
That’s an article from 2 weeks back. (24 May) of an announcement of the deal. The ground reality today is the drivers own the fleet, with both Ola and Uber financing it to some degree.
Didn't the Indian election just happen a few months ago? So if this was just a PR thing wouldn't it have been better to do it just before the election and not right afterwards?
> * Everyone knows Uber and Ola don't own their fleet so who'll be accountable?
They don't own the fleet. But if the current regulation hits the books they cannot afford to lose their entire fleet as there is competition in the market(although barely). This is not that simple that the entire burden would be shifted on the drivers. I think what would happen is Uber/Ola would subsidize the drivers(thereby sharing the transitioning costs) to move to an electric motors.
Regarding public bus, many states are currently testing electric buses. I have seen 2-3 in my city, though recent reports indicate the state run transport company is not that happy with the buses since they don't make enough profit or due to charging issues.
This article has a list of all the states that are soing trial runs along with the bus manufacturer's name:
>After Goa and Delhi, Kerala government has joined the race to dip from Centre’s `4,500-crore FAME-2 ( Faster Adoption & Manufacturing of Electric Vehicles) subsidy pool. The state’s public transport entity KSRTC has floated tenders to lease 1,500 electric buses for 10 years.
How would this work? As far as I know neither of them owns the vehicles in their “fleet”.
Do they just provide incentives for drivers to buy electric vehicles? Or is the government actually expecting them to put company-owned electric vehicles on the streets?
Simplest way to make this work would be to gate new driver signup by vehicle type (with verification). If they are under 40% EVs then they wouldn't allow new non-EV drivers to sign up for the service at all.
Also, they'd likely want to pay EV drivers more, to create the correct incentives to get enough EV vehicles into their "fleet".
This is not a solution at all. The churn rate on drivers is probably too high with Uber/Lyft services (most drivers aren't full time and do this when they feel like it). This means while the EV adoption is under the cutoff (40%) in your case, no new drivers would be joining while lots of drivers who are already active drivers become inactive.
This means not only are Uber/Lyft not acquiring any drivers (or just signing up a tiny percentage that have EVs) while they lose a lot of their existing drivers.
It sounds like it would work -- there'd be plenty of time when only EV drivers would be allowed to drive (since the quota isn't met at that moment). This would create a lot of incentive for people to get EVs, so that they could drive for Uber whenever they wanted, rather than only occasionally.
These conditions would need to be imposed on taxis as well, for maximal effect. Grandfather in existing taxis, and then past a certain date, new taxis must be EVs.
You're asking low income workers to suddenly front the bill for an entirely new vehicle. This isn't going to happen. What will happen is the same thing that did to people with the affordable care act in the united states: it becomes a regressive tax they pay because the alternative is simply too expensive. Better to pay the tax penalty than an unaffordable insurance requirement per month.
Most rideshare vehicles are financed, not bought outright in cash. If the increase in income from driving an EV exceeds the additional monthly cost of an EV then it's a no-brainer, especially once you factor in cheaper fuel costs.
And your take on the ACA is quite off; it's given healthcare to many more people than previously had.
Is Lyft still arranging leases for drivers / do they do that in India? If so, that's an easy place to encourage EVs.
Guaranteeing and publicizing a better rev share for EVs could drive adoption, although slowly. For quicker adoption, they could set up a wait list for drivers with non-EVs and tell the drivers they can skip the line if they get an EV. For every two EV drivers that sign up, they can also let in three non-EV drivers. When a non-EV driver quits, they reduce their EV deficit; when an EV driver quits, their EV deficit increases.
How they change their fleets is their business. They could give higher compensation to people with EV's. They could treat ICE as if they weren't around when the maximum number of ICE cars is on the road.
They don’t own their own fleets, do they can’t change what they don’t have.
It will be up to whoever is working on their platforms to procure EVs, and with India’s lack of developed EV production capacity and super high tariffs on imports, this goal completely unworkable by the deadline put forth.
Why is this obvious? If the composition of their fleets is not their business why is it clear that the way they manage their fleets is? I would actually assume that there are probably loads of regulations that already govern the ways Uber can manage its fleet?
It would limit their fleet sizes to 2.5x the number of electric vehicles. Depending on electric vechile adoption they might not need to do much. Presumably they would pay x$/month to EV owners in their fleets, deduct some fees from IC car owners, and or simply require higher customer approval etc.
To be honest it would probably be better to add a progressively increasing tax on non-electric car fares - so first year it is announced, second year it's 5% of the fare, third it's 10%, fourth 15%, fifth 20%, etc.
And use that tax pool to create programs for acquiring EVs (business or otherwise).
You can even add an exemption to offset the start period by a year or two for cars bought within a year to avoid screwing over people who just invested in a new car for this purpose.
The problem is it would just force people out of the market. Like in the USA the average car is getting up to the 25-35k range and is not something people can change to easily. You're asking someone working for Wal-mart wages (which tend to be what many Uber people essentially make) to incur a huge new debt load or progressively harsher taxes.
You guys need to understand the impacts of the policies you recommend, because this is why people are against climate change efforts so vigorously.
Well one option is to give subsidies for electric cars to offset this a bit, the other is hope that electric production ramps up and drives the cost down - that's why it would be increased gradually - from barely significant to unable to compete in 5 years.
Around here we already have a law that any taxi drivers (Uber and others included) cannot use a car older than 5 years.
Wouldn't you want a higher tax earlier to offset the higher EV cost?
A 1% tax isn't going to help if EVs are twice as expensive, whereas in 20 years time where hopefully EVs are approaching cost parity a 20% tax shouldn't be needed.
But on the other hand you want to broadcast to everyone that in the medium term your taxi will need to be electric, so plan accordingly. Taxes are hard!
Well you need to give time for market to readjust so the ramp-up is a grade period - but instead of doing it 1% per year you do it in 5% per year or some similar significant increment - this way you're clearly signaling what's going to happen without completely screwing people who invested in ICU.
Uber doesn’t own any cars though. That’s a big part of their business model.
Even a significant % of traditional taxis don’t own the cars. The taxi drivers are ‘brokers’ who buy and maintain the vehicles and make a deal with the taxi companies for business (branding, debit/credit card machines, running the phones, etc).
Uber would have to require most new cars from drivers they hire to be electric in order to accomplish this. Otherwise they’ll be forced to get into the fleet buying/maintenance business.
There's a set of requirements. Basically it boils down to the car needing to be reasonably new and having four doors. They don't want people associating Uber with 90s shitboxes.
Yes they already have requirements about age, size, models, no-2dr cars etc. The difference is there are already tons of regular people with vehicles that fit this profile already.
>The difference is there are already tons of regular people with vehicles that fit this profile already.
Not in India. The cars operated (usually now owned) by Uber/Ola drivers are considered high end cars and are loaned to the drivers by a cottage industry of agencies which take a cut of the fare (not sure if that cut comes from Uber's side or the driver's share).
The question is whether it will be economical for your standard Uber driver to own electric cars by 2026. Otherwise the number of people able to make money on the side p/t with their personal vehicle will be far smaller - therefore increasing the cost of fares if demand is higher than the supply of vehicles available.
‘Surge’ pricing already exists for this reason. Which will be good for electric car owners and Uber, bad for the average consumer rider who will pay higher fees and drivers who can’t afford an electric vehicle will be out of work.
The whole point of making laws is to get people to do things that aren't economical to do in the absence of laws, or not do things that are economical to do in the absence of laws. I don't see why it's so incomprehensible that the government would ask a private business to do something that's not economical.
Yes no ones debating that. Particularly in India with their long history of gov intervening in every sort of business.
But those same people who call for this type of policy were already outraged at the idea of surge pricing and the service being more exclusive to the middle class and wealthy. I wouldn’t be surprised if this amplifies that. Not only for riders but also for the poor drivers who get excluded because they can’t afford a new electric car.
Of course this policy is a bit of a gamble that those 4dr electric cars will be feasible and economical for your average Uber driver to own. It’s possible costs will be similar in 5yrs and won’t add too much expenses which will roll down hill.
The simplest thing would be to change how the driver app assigns jobs. Under certain conditions, when they look at the Uber driver app, drivers of gasoline cars would just not see jobs available where drivers of electric cars (in the same location at the same time) would.
Adjust conditions as necessary so that you hit your target (while also trying to minimize service disruption).
Because Uber drivers can't make money if they can't accept jobs, this creates an incentive for drivers to have an electric vehicle. They can get jobs others can't.
Eventually, the market should even work out the correct pricing. There's already a mechanism to pay more when drivers are in short supply. If the supply gets restricted because gasoline cars are sometimes ineligible, compensation has to go up (assuming Uber doesn't want to make customers wait forever for a ride).
Well, how would this work is often an afterthought for Government in India. Last year they promised healthcare for bottom 40% of India, which in theory sounds nice for the elections and the masses, but fail to implement or allocate funds.
Since this is primarily aimed at foreign companies operating in India, may be there could be some success, unless they bribe out of this.
So let's jump start the beginning of "S Curve of Electric Adoption" going for cars. 2 or 3 years back, Minister of Transport Mr. Nitin Gadkari had dropped a bombshell right in the middle of some mega Car Event. "I am NOT going to allow you to sell ICE post 2030". Audience was like ....... Awwwww
Battery Mini-Riksaw are already dominating many of the small towns in India right now. Registration for Diesel Tri-wheelers is already stopped in some capital cities. Petrol may be on the way out too within 5 years.
This is a good thing. But I really hope India invests a lot in public transportation and related infrastructure, especially in tier 2 and tier 3 cities.
Where do you anticipate all these cars being made? What about the cars that are currently owned, where the sunk cost of mfg was already paid and it's more economical to continue using vs. replace?
For example, if the U.S. required half of all cars sold be EV, then there would be no cars available to buy for 2-3 years just to ramp up production alone. Millions of jobs lost during that time too.
>EV sales in India grew three-fold to 3,600 in the year ended March but still account for about 0.1% of the 3.3 million diesel and gasoline cars sold in the country over the period, industry data showed. China's electric car sales, meanwhile, rose 62% in 2018 to 1.3 million vehicles.
>Motorcycles and scooters sold for commercial purposes, like food delivery or for use by e-commerce companies, will also need to be electric from April 2023, the person added.
>Its Ola Electric Mobility unit in March raised ₹400 crore ($58 million) from investors including venture capital fund Tiger Global and Matrix Partners.
>It also raised $300 million from Hyundai Motor and Kia Motors and formed a strategic partnership with the South Korean duo to help build India-specific EVs.
Having just been in India, I can safely say that Uber in India is one of the worst uber experiences I have seen, independently of this change.
India's car policies will make this very difficult.
Right now the "made in India" car restrictions means that India doesn't share car infrastructure with the rest of the world. From what a local was telling me, car manufacturers typically transfer their tooling from old product lines in other parts of the world when assembly lines are re-tooled to build cheaper India only vehicles.
Thankfully, the big cities are so congested that the older model cars with older model safety systems, but this approach won't work with EVs, which are not yet mainstream in the rest of the world.
My guess is that a modern version of a tuk-tuk would be ideal, but battery production is going to be a very big problem for this. India has the 3rd largest automobile market and a low level of vehicle adoption, but until they fix infrastructure, I don't see it happening.
India has aggressive climate change commitments. It is setting long term expectations and providing guidelines to the biggest influencers [Uber/Ola]. It gives an indicator to the manufacturers, infra providers, service providers and the end consumers on what to expect. It is in line with their 2025 goals.
While I don't know about this specific policy, I'm happy that the push to electric vehicles (and hopefully carbon-free energy) is happening worldwide. This is one of the big areas we need to do absolutely immediately.
> "Without changing the size of our homes, or our cars, or fundamentally changing the fabric of our lives, a fully electrified energy economy using non-carbon fuel sources would require less than half of the total amount of energy we use today."
To everyone recommending adding more restrictions to the cars that can be driven for rideshare companies, please, I don't know where you live but India is not at all as rich as your country. There's no infrastructure to support electric cars not to mention no drivers who can actually buy it. Here's an example, today I rode Uber for one journey for one hour and paid 500 Rs (7 USD). In US I pay more than 10USD for a few miles (may be 15 minutes) only. Do you really think this guy is going to buy an electric car?
Yes it's a PR campaign, elections may be over but reelected government has to show that its better than past and what better way to make empty promises, which cost nothing.
Every point made by ShirsenduK is to the mark about conditions in India.
Ola recently raised $56 million to spin out a dedicated business that focus only on electric vehicles. In March, Power Minister R. K. Singh said the government was aiming to ensure that at least 30% of the country's vehicles run on electricity by 2030, a significant dilution of the earlier-stated goal of an all-EV fleet by that year.
This might be irrelevant to the topic at hand, but the cover image of the news article that the reader first sees is very misleading. It depicts nothing that might hint towards the article talking about Uber, Ola or electrification of their fleets. Yes, there appears to be a traffic jam (which in an indirect way can be linked to Uber and Ola being public modes of transport), but that is because there is a road-show going on related to an election.
Mahindra & Mahindra already has an electric version of their sedan cabs, called eVerito. They seem to be popular and M&M is expanding their numbers. They were specifically introduced as vehicles for cab fleets. I find quite a few of them everywhere in my city.
I don't think that solar panels will be capable of generating enough power to make much of an impact on an electric car's mileage. Happy to be corrected.
The standard solar panel has an input rate of around 1000 Watts per square meter, however on the solar panels available at present you will only gain roughly 15-20% efficiency at best. Therefore if your solar panel was 1 square meter in size, then it would likely only produce around 150-200W in good sunlight. [1]
For example: 2 square meter panel x 1000 = 2000 x 0.20 (20% efficiency panel) = 400. 400 x 5 hours of sun hours = 2000 Watt hours per day. [ibid]
In 2012, the EPA range for the 60 kWh battery pack model was 208 mi (335 km) and the 85 kWh battery was 265 miles (426 km). [2]
A Tesla gets about 3.5 miles per kWh, so you would be able to get about 7 miles of driving distance per day (5 hours of sunlight) of charging.
The Prius has an optional roof solar panel, which generates about enough power to run the fan in the car when it's parked outside of shade to keep the cabin a little bit cooler.
Probably correct. Tesla had solar roofs stated as one of their second phase of goals but has since concluded it wouldn’t really work. An alternative model is to have fold out roofs that can operate while parked.
I don't think that will get you enough to really change the math. There's only so much additional space you can get with a fold out panel because once you start going over the edge of the car you create clearance requirements for parking and also start taking up space that's generally assumed to be empty for adjacent cars to open doors into. If it becomes too common parking spots will have to get bigger or your roof will have to raise up above the level of 99% of adjacent car doors to avoid being a massive pain in the ass to everyone else.
On top of that it's a lot of mechanisms to add for not adding much space above a roof mounted panel.
Yes, but it won't be spewing out any noxious gases while stranded in traffic (neither would a hybrid or a shut off idle car, but none of those are in that picture).
Seems crazy to me. Most taxi and uber/gypsy cab drivers run hybrid Priuses because they are the most cost effective and economical vehicles for this purpose in stop and go traffic. Insisting on EV's when charging tech is so inefficient and scarce seems hugely problematic for the foreseeable future. Seems a lousy investment for anyone wanting to make money providing a driving service through one of the mobile platform middlemen.
But given the age of India's electricity infrastructure and the huge challenges, this initiative would definitely present large challenges. The good news is that there is political will and a general absence of politically powerful retrograde lobbies to stop this from happening if tried sincerely.
Based on Uber's history, they'll probably cook up some scheme to fraudulently register combustion vehicles as electric or find some other shady way around the regulation.
Hence the realistic goal of 40% by 2026, that should be enough to setup the charging infrastructure and also to be able to complete the power plants (nuclear,solar, hydro) under construction.
Grandstanding about doing something is very different from actually doing it. Grandstanding is free. That is what this 'reported order' is. To some extent it's the government's job to do this kind of PR, but we don't have to buy it hook line and sinker.
When the government does something concrete to boost the infrastructure, I will be the first to applaud.
"So far, the incumbent government has constructed a total of 28,531 km national highways since FY 2014-15, contrasting with 16,505 km by the previous government up to FY 2013-14, a clear gain of an astounding 12,026 kms, the Financial Express reported."
I thought you talked about physical infrastructure (roads and highways) needed for cars to ply on. After re-reading your comment I realised you are talking about infrastructure needed specifically for electric cars (like charging stations). My bad! Apologise for that!
Either ways, I don't see how the Government can help in this! Isn't this the prerogative of the companies manufacturing their EV to setup? The only place where Government can help is providing land and electric power for these charging stations. That should not be a big deal.
* Indian car companies do not have electric cars (a real car can go for atleast 200kms a charge/refill).
* A car factory(even non-electric) would take atleast 5 years to start churning cars.
* Even in that case, it will have to import 40% of the cost ie batteries as India cannot make them. If it starts today, it can in 10 years.
* Import duties of fully assembled, SKD and CKD electric cars is very high makes them uncompetitive to petrol/diesel cars.
* Direct importing is not viable as it requires certification.
* 60% of India's electric supply is coal based.
And to top it;
* Upto 50% of pollution a car will cause is done during production of the car ie before even a kilometre has been driven. Replacing lots of good working cars from the street is not environment friendly.