India plans massive shift to electric cars | Hacker News Reader

India plans massive shift to electric cars

techinasia.com

42 pointsjseliger22 comments

Makes sense. India has just 32 vehicles for every 1,000 people (compared to the 800 vehicles per 1,000 people in the United States and 140 vehicles per 1,000 people in China)[1].

If you're going to mobilize 1 billion people, you may as well "leapfrog" the internal combustion engine and move straight to electric vehicles.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicles_...

What India needs is better public and mass transport and not improved vehicles/1000 people.

India has 4 times the population of US and 1/4 the area of US (approximately). If you consider those facts India nearly has way too many vehicles/square mile (considering 2 wheeler and 3 wheelers that run on gas).

I believe that India has to leapfrog the whole car obsession and move over to an effective and extensive public transportation and make cities more “superblocks" like in Barcelona (https://youtu.be/ZORzsubQA_M).

Adam ruins Cars (http://www.trutv.com/shows/adam-ruins-everything/blog/adams-...) is a rather informative piece you should watch.

The problem is that india gets most of its electricity from coal (59.1%).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_India

I'm not entirely sure if this is scalable. Do we (as in the world) have enough reserves of Lithium for this to be possible ? There is also the question of trade balance (presumably with China/Japan as well as upstream Lithium miners). Add to this, India barely has power for normal domestic consumption; even in Bangalore, the ostensible "Silicon valley" of India, power cuts for an hour or two is a daily affair.

Environmental solutions, incl. solar, are okay for assuaging the guilt about wrecking the environment (and India is totally wrecked), but frankly it's not clear if any of these are really scalable. This appears to me as another PR stunt pulled by the new regime in charge.

There might be something else than lithium running out, like cobalt. On the other hand, if you're willing to go with somewhat less range, you can go with lithium iron phosphate.

> lithium iron phosphate

Far as I can tell, lithium iron phosphate battery technology is sustainable over geologic time scales. Unlike other things that require minerals that are rapidly being depleted and will be low supply and expensive in 50 years.

For the person who downvoted me, do you think I'm wrong? I would like to hear why.

Lithium is a more common element than lead - and there has been no lead shortage for cars yet. Even a Tesla uses less lithium than lead for its batteries.

For the trade balance of India this is a big help, as the reduced needs of oil imports vastly overshadow any lithium imports.

With charging controlled by the supply, electrical cars can actually help stabilizing the grid. It is also very easy to supply them with solar energy during daytime.

>> India barely has power for normal domestic consumption; even in Bangalore, the ostensible "Silicon valley" of India, power cuts for an hour or two is a daily affair. - Thats because India today relies heavily on hydro electric power and does not have as many peaker plants to handle peak capacity loads. One could make an argument that this is a perfect scenario for solar on rooftops (South India is a temperate country and gets lots of sun) generating the needed power locally and feeding the rest back into the grid as a perfect example that would work for India.

>> There is also the question of trade balance (presumably with China/Japan as well as upstream Lithium miners) - Those are today's constraints. I am not so sure, these are the same challenges that we would be worrying about a decade from now. Geopolitics and tech. change all the time.

>> Environmental solutions, incl. solar, are okay for assuaging the guilt about wrecking the environment (and India is totally wrecked) - Thats true, India today is totally wrecked, but so was 18th century London. You can always get better.

I've looked for data on Indian power production regularly and the statement that India relies heavily on hydro power is dubious.

The best I could find is that 42 GW is hydro, while 42 is renewables and 211 is thermal.

The North and South grids have only recently been linked (maybe only as recent as 2014).

So Saying India relies heavily on Hydro Power goes against my intuition with the industry and I would like to understand your position.

I think electrification of 2 stroke motorcycles and auto rickshaws makes more sense in the near term, both from a cost perspective (smaller batteries), and because they are disproportionate contributors to local air pollution. They could also be well suited for battery swap as a recharging method.

One good thing about India is attitude towards public transportation. One city to another is [easier/cheaper/safer] by train/bus than a car for most people. I wish the Govt invested more on core infrastructure and (1) Add more trains (2) introduce high-speed routes (3) Fix the IRCTC system so that people can reliably book tickets. More cars /1000 people is not a model that would work for highly dense and populous nation like India. There is simply no space for US like Inter-state roads in Indian cities. Plus, it is easier on the environment to invest in public infrastructure than adding more cars.

Growing up in India, I have always thought about a car when I three or four people need to go somewhere. If not, thought starts with motorcycle. I wish more cities in the US were motor-cycle friendly.

> The government intends to kickstart the shift by setting up and incentivizing manufacturers of batteries and other components as well as charging stations.

---

“I will announce locations for between two and four Gigafactories later this year – probably four.” - Elon Musk

India has already offered incentives for Tesla to open up car factories before they decided to go with China first IIRC. Piyush Goyal (minister of renewable energy, mines) still seems to be a fan of Tesla

Meanwhile Germany tries to kickstart electric cars by subsidizing buying a new electric car. Almost nobody wants the money (because there are way too few charging stations). At least our favorite industry gets their state handouts...

Q: How they gonna produce that amount of electricity?

A: Using politics and destroying the world’s largest mangrove forest. (Sorry if i am so rude or offensive here)

Sad!

I dont know if govt of Bangladesh is somehow forced to build a massive 1,320 megawatt coal-fired power plant within kilometres of the Sundarbans, india will have almost 85%(+/-) of the electricity produced from here.

I would request the Norway’s sovereign wealth fund and other investors to not to invest and let something good happen. To me that is not progress, We are all bad...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/20...

http://www.thedailystar.net/frontpage/risk-losing-sundarbans...

Can they bring the cost down where Indians can afford it? Even in the US it seems like a luxury.

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