A milestone’s been spied for a switchover to EVs

Context: The government has expressed confidence that electric vehicles (EVs) will achieve parity with conventional petrol burners in India within two years.

What is the cost trend estimate of EVs?

By Crisil Research report estimates, all vehicles get increasingly economical with greater use. But EVs are seen to do this better, the gap would close sooner for covering long distances.

This is good news from a climate perspective. However, electricity generation also needs to be clean.

What are the challenges faced in promotion of  EV?

Crude is also getting dearer over the years. But recent war-driven disruptions to the assembly of fossil cars could impact EVs too. For example – the price of Nickel, a key battery input, has soared.

China’s dominance of battery-making is another source of anxiety for the global EV industry.

In India, while talk of battery swapping for energy refill has been in the air, it is still a long way to go.

Also, charging networks would have to prove their reliability on ease of access and the speed of recharge. The pace of spreading of EV stations matters too.

Safety concern – as currently been probed by the Centre after a sting of fire mishaps.

Way forward:

There is a need for state incentives to plug cost-of-ownership gaps in India. Need for fixing quality bugs to enable EV market takeoff.

Source: This post is created based on the article “A milestone’s been spied for a switchover to EVs” published on 14/April/2022 in Mint.