What India Needs to do to Give Electric Vehicles a Push

Three large multinationals and the world’s two most populous countries, India and China, have come forward to secure an all-electric future for the automobile.

After India expressed its desire to go-all electric this year and backed its intention with a policy push, the Chinese have hopped on board with an announcement last week that they are working on a timetable to end sales of fossil fuel-based vehicles.

A few manufacturers have also followed suit. Volvo AB wants all its new cars to run on electricity from 2019. Jaguar Land Rover Automotive Plc. will only make electric and hybrid cars from 2020 and Volkswagen AG (VW), the world’s largest car manufacturer, on Tuesday said it is building batteries that can run automobiles for up to 1,000km. Every fourth car VW sells will be powered by electricity, it said. VW has been the pioneer of diesel technology, and a 2015 scandal around cheating on emission tests has forced it to change tack. The German car maker now wants to emerge as the leader in green tech. On Friday, the ride-hailing behemoth Uber Technologies Inc. said all its cars in London would be fully electric or a plug-in hybrid by 2025. Mint on Tuesday reported that India’s JSW Group is in talks for a partnership with Volvo for electric vehicles.

Back home, there is only one true blue manufacturer of electric vehicles—the homegrown Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. Sure, there are multinationals such as Nissan Motor Co. Ltd and Toyota Motor Crop., which have advanced technologies in the sphere, but they are costly. So, Mahindra does have an advantage, especially after the government clearly said companies that follow official policies aggressively and switch to non-polluting fuels stand to benefit in the long term.

So, how much of this can come through? As of now only 2 million of 1 billion cars plying on world roads are electric.