India's EV Paradox: Highest Subsidies, Lowest Uptake (indiadispatch.com) 85
India, the world's fifth-largest economy, is offering the heftiest electric vehicle subsidies globally -- yet has achieved just 2% market penetration so far. From a report: India's total EV subsidies amount to 40-50% of vehicle prices when accounting for GST (goods and services tax), road tax benefits, state subsidies and production-linked incentives. For larger vehicles like the Grand Vitara, the effective subsidy reaches 61%.
This dwarfs incentives in other major markets. China's subsidies represent about 10% of EV prices, while South Korea and Germany offer around 16-20%. The US provides roughly 26% through various federal and state programs.
Yet India's EV penetration significantly lags these markets. China has reached 24% penetration, South Korea 18%, Germany 20%, and the US 8%. India's 2% looks particularly stark in comparison.
This dwarfs incentives in other major markets. China's subsidies represent about 10% of EV prices, while South Korea and Germany offer around 16-20%. The US provides roughly 26% through various federal and state programs.
Yet India's EV penetration significantly lags these markets. China has reached 24% penetration, South Korea 18%, Germany 20%, and the US 8%. India's 2% looks particularly stark in comparison.
How's the charging infrastructure? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How's the charging infrastructure? POOR (Score:4, Informative)
High costs, poor electrical quality. Its a bit of a meme, but many still steal their electricity off of live wires, this does not help reliability.
https://www.spglobal.com/mobil... [spglobal.com]
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No and no. This is actually why EVs are a dead end in developing countries right now, and why a big question is what will happen there should large shipments of used ICEs that form majority of their fleets die out due to lack of sales of new ICEs in developed nations.
Considering that EVs have largely become a "second car in a two car household" thing in most places first, and "only car in household" second even for developed nations, meaning it's primarily a car for people who own a house and can install a
Re: How's the charging infrastructure? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: How's the charging infrastructure? (Score:4, Insightful)
This sounds like political witch hunt but not to worry, you are hereby pardoned!
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I'm perfectly happy with my healthcare and have been for most of my adult life.....especially without any govt involvement in it....
Lifetime US citizen.
That's like telling us your auto coverage is great because you've never had to file a claim or your car is always less than two years old.
Nobody that actually receives medical bills is impressed with the situation. We all get older, and you will need healthcare whether you like it or not.
For one thing, state and federal government has always been balls deep in your health insurance for your own good because otherwise they'd just take your money. You will always pick the cheapest insurance and the cheapest i
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The USA does not have issues with availability of charging infrastructure and it's trivial to add a L1 charger to most houses. This is about India. The USA has other reasons for its low EV adoption.
Re:How's the charging infrastructure? (Score:5, Informative)
In the US, unless you are in California and some other select cities, you very much DO indeed have problems with availability of charging infrastructure.
I live in New Orleans and according to the maps I've been given for publicly available charging stations, there are precious few of them....most of the ones listed are privately owned and on private property.
And you cannot discount the large number of of people in the US that rent, that have no access or permission to add any sort of charger at home, much less have off street parking to accommodate it.
That's at least 1/3 of the whole country....
There are other reasons as you alluded to...but, please don't discount the main reasons I listed.
You don't live in the US...I should think it would be a bit difficult for you to speak on the subject in an completely informed manner....?
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In the US, unless you are in California and some other select cities, you very much DO indeed have problems with availability of charging infrastructure.
My mom lives in a town of 11,000 people. One town over, in another town of a little less than 11,000 people, there's a Tesla Supercharger. There are multiple low-power chargers, and also a multi-stall non-Tesla DCFC station in town. This is more than a one-hour drive to the edge of the nearest thing that could be called a city.
If you don't have charging infrastructure, that's probably a sign that nobody owns EVs, so there's no demand for installing them.
I live in New Orleans and according to the maps I've been given for publicly available charging stations, there are precious few of them....most of the ones listed are privately owned and on private property.
All chargers, to within the margin of error, are pr
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Not really an option for much if not MOST of New Orleans proper....
Old city...most houses do NOT have off street parking, you park where you can when you come home at night, just like your other neighbors do...nothing is reserved.
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Not really an option for much if not MOST of New Orleans proper....
Old city...most houses do NOT have off street parking, you park where you can when you come home at night, just like your other neighbors do...nothing is reserved.
Yeah, that's a problem in a lot of cities that aren't really designed to handle cars. And unfortunately, either way, you're back to the government having to care enough about the issue to solve it, either by reserving parking places for residents so that they can install the chargers themselves or by paying for the mountains of infrastructure required. Nothing short of legislation will solve that problem.
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In the US, unless you are in California and some other select cities, you very much DO indeed have problems with availability of charging infrastructure.
Not true anymore. It's the inverse, actually. If you live in most sane cities (i.e. not NYC), then there are no problems with fast charging: https://supercharge.info/map [supercharge.info]
I live in New Orleans and according to the maps I've been given for publicly available charging stations, there are precious few of them....most of the ones listed are privately owned and on private property.
For slow charging, you really need a charger at home or work.
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New Orleans is a VERY old city...and most homes there, rental or owned....do not have off street parking.
So, not really many good options for charging at home for most folks.
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New Orleans is a VERY old city...and most homes there, rental or owned....do not have off street parking.
Here in Seattle, the local utility is trialing chargers on electric poles. This can work in New Orleans. You're also overestimating the size of the old city in New Orleans, most of the city is quite new.
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In the US, unless you are in California and some other select cities, you very much DO indeed have problems with availability of charging infrastructure.
There's enough infrastructure that you can pass through almost anywhere in the lower 48, but there's certainly still a lot of places in this country where if you couldn't charge at home, there's nowhere close by to charge an EV.
Where my father lives in NC, the closest fast charger is 30 miles away. On the major highways from Florida, charging availability is fine, but if I want to drive around town after I'd arrived, I have to plug in at his place. I have a portable EVSE in my car. If he didn't own a ho
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A reason I went with a Tesla in 2018 was it was
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USA is not a developing country but still.
You'd wouldn't know it by how much people whine that putting in charging infrastructure is some sort of impossible undertaking that's never going to happen. Makes you wonder how all those gas stations got here in the first place.
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A lot of people didn't own a horse and putting a car inside your home (or your city) is much easier than putting a horse inside your home or your city. So, upgrading from tram to car didn't require disposing of stuff, first.
People bought their kerosene (there were a few steam-powered vehicles before cars) or petroleum in gallon drums. The first gas-stations and repair shops were built by the people selling cars. Once bowsers were installed, many places didn't have rail so a tanker-truck had to be drive
Re: How's the charging infrastructure? (Score:2)
China is building coal-fired power plants to charge EVs, is it better for your vehicles to be run on fossil fuels or coal?
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PRC isn't doing "NEV" (Chinese propaganda language that calls them "new energy vehicles") transition for some silly narrative reasons. They're doing it because they're preparing for a long term stand-off with the West over Taiwan. Part of that is maintaining state logistics in face of a likely blockade of oil shipments going from Middle East to PRC either around Indian subcontinent, or Straight of Malacca. Both are well outside current strike range of PLAN, so there's little they can do about it without goi
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You might want to check your geography. For oil shipments from the Middle East to get to the Strait of Malacca they have to go around the Indian subcontinent.
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You might want to check your reading comprehension. I stated that it can be easily interdicted at one of those two points. Because that is where the flow goes. You don't need to be an expert to check this in less than 15 seconds. One look at marinetraffic.com will confirm my point.
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that is because you doctored the relevant sentence by removing it's first word entirely and then replied to the doctored version. This doctoring completely changed the meaning of the statement.
The full statement including the first word without your doctoring goes:
>BLOCKADE of oil shipments going from Middle East to PRC either around Indian subcontinent, or Straight of Malacca.
Emphasis mine. Subject isn't "oil shipments" but "blockade of oil shipments".
Re: How's the charging infrastructure? (Score:4, Insightful)
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What charts are you looking at, I'm looking here. https://ourworldindata.org/co2... [ourworldindata.org] China maybe producing less CO2 per unit of energy but by nearly every single other metric, they're making global CO2 problems worse.
CO2 per capita, growing at a crazy rate.
CO2 growth nearly every year.
In just 7 years they've gone from half the lifetime CO2 of the US to 60% and in less than half the time.
China now accounts for more than 30% of global CO2 despite probably being 15% of the world population (you can't trust th
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And the industrial countries went in denial and debated how climate change was a hoax, and if not
Re: How's the charging infrastructure? (Score:2)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/m... [forbes.com]
Re: How's the charging infrastructure? (Score:2)
It moves the pollution to more easily controlled places, cutting the smog. Plus EVs can switch to other power sources as they become available, ICEs can't. So it actually makes sense for them.
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> is it better for your vehicles to be run on fossil fuels or coal?
Coal.
Setting aside your incorrect assertion about what China is or is not building, and their actual energy mix, an EV's efficiency is so high that even if charged from a coal powerplant via a grid network the per-mile emissions are comparable to a Prius.
When you consider China's actual energy mix, emissions are considerably lower.
So yeah, "coal powered EV" beats just about any gasoline or diesel ICEV in terms of emissions.
=Smidge=
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China is building coal-fired power plants to charge EVs, is it better for your vehicles to be run on fossil fuels or coal?
I'd like to see all coal plants shuttered but at least the ones being built in China are very modern ones.
That's how they should have started instead of the 1000s of crap ones they built decades ago when they were ramping up their coal consumption by nearly an order of magnitude but better late than never & they've reportedly been shuttering the old nasty ones aggressively for the past decade
https://www.americanprogress.o... [americanprogress.org]
https://globalenergyprize.org/... [globalenergyprize.org]
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China is building coal-fired power plants to charge EVs, is it better for your vehicles to be run on fossil fuels or coal?
China is _replacing_ coal power plants. Their coal consumption has peaked this year. Also, EVs are more CO2-efficient than ICE cars even when powered from coal power plants.
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is it better for your vehicles to be run on fossil fuels or coal?
Not a very good question, because China isn't building coal plants specifically for EVs and gas plants for all other uses. They're increasing their total energy production, using whatever works for them, so it's not like eliminating EVs will suddenly eliminate new coal plants.
Keep in mind that the extraction and refining of petroleum, and the distribution of gas are all among the most energy consuming and polluting processes; their cost needs to be added to the pollution and energy cost of ICEs, on top of t
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"This is actually why EVs are a dead end in developing countries right now,"
Such countries should be building & improving their electrical infrastructure and looking at electrifying PUBLIC transit, not focusing on private ownership for now
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Actually such countries should be focusing on things completely unrelated to any of this babble, beyond ensuring that they can get enough access to spare parts. Article of mindless faith that "public transit", something that requires high level of orderliness from society to work is a proper solution for nations who's primary problem is excess disorder at every level of organisation... is so phenomenally idiotic that about the only thing I can do is provide you with this link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?. [youtube.com]
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Please go fuck yourself. Every country can do more than one thing at a time.
And this "babble" is about ELECTRIFICATION.
If you think that's a bad thing, let's see you live without it.
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This is more of the same "No bread? Eat cake. Here's how!" delusion. Coupled with white savior complex on top of it, thinking you know better than those lowly third worlders. Who almost universally arrange their personal automotive logistics around used ICEs and bikes.
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EVs in developing countries aren't really an issue. In fact, they can be a solution to a lot of issues.
India's grid sucks. The power is bad and it's unreliable. But they are also in a relatively sunny location. EVs can provide a necessary bridge by heing what are basically large mobile batteries.
Oil and ICE engines require far more infrastructure - you require an oil field to provide the crude, then all the transportation of such, then the refineries, then transportation of the product to the end user. This
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"No bread? Let them eat cake! Perfect solution for these reasons".
These delusional posts that feature people who genuinely have not a faintest clue how developing countries function at all, and just project developed country baseline upon them is sad. This isn't the first one with this exact theme either.
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If EV roll outs are to be serious (i.e. PRC where EVs are considered a national security issue due to geography of how oil gets there and interdiction paths by geostrategic competitors), you need to sink an absolute fortune into a functional charging network. And even PRC hasn't done quite enough on that front yet.
If EV roll outs are to be serious, you better be thinking of ALL the other shit that requires oil other than the fucking EV.
Yes. The EV too. Those tires they chew through hauling around another cars worth of battery aren’t exactly made of hemp and bullshit. Or the plastic dash in the car. Or the plastic tits in the driver. Figure out what you’re going to make plastic milk jugs and IV bags out of.yet? Hell, we’ll BURN more oil than ever to make the electricity to charge the “gr
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I'm probably one of about two people who remembers how fractional distillation of oil works and what are the limiting factors in it on this site. Unironically. Every time I remind people that the limiting factor is kerosene, and so it doesn't matter how much less gasoline we use in cars as long as planes have to fly, amount of oil consumed isn't going to change I get a lot of ignorant commenters screeching about how I must be wrong.
This before going into the whole "fertilizer" discussion. Since genocidal id
Re: How's the charging infrastructure? (Score:3)
The only way they become a thing in India is if they have battery swap stations like China built out.
But that either means one primary company, or all of the companies agreeing to one battery standard. ... and likely increasing the cost of the cars a bit, as you don't have as much flexibility when designing them
And you actually need reliable power going to those stations
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It's not even that. Think about the actual use cases in India. Who actually buys vehicles in India? To even afford to buy a vehicle, someone has to be on the higher end of the income scale.
The USA has ~0.85 four-wheeled vehicles per person. India has 0.034 four-wheeled vehicles per person. [dataforindia.com] The average Indian is FAR more likely to walk, use public transportation, a motorcycle, or a moped to commute to a job, go for groceries, etc.
The reason to have a car in India is LITERALLY to show off that you're a
Re: How's the charging infrastructure? (Score:4, Interesting)
https://www.mxmoto.co/blogs/el... [mxmoto.co]
Re: How's the charging infrastructure? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems like the next logical step is for more people to get an ebike, not an electric car.
Indeed. But a car is seen as a status symbol. India's gender imbalance is not as severe as China's, but enough to put pressure on young men to invest in status symbols to attract a GF/bride.
Another problem is that India spends way more on fossil fuel subsidies than on EV subsidies.
The fuel subsidies are especially stupid because India imports, like, 98% of its oil.
The first step should be to remove the fossil fuel subsidies and replace them with taxes.
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The first step should be to remove the fossil fuel subsidies and replace them with taxes.
That will totally get you elected.
Re: How's the charging infrastructure? (Score:2)
The reason the battery swap stations are so well used in China isn't personal use... it's taxis.
And those could be running for many hours every day, when a personal car is usually about commuting or errands.
I don't know what the standard is for taxis in India (sitting on the back of a motorcycle? Jitneys?), but there should be an attempt to electrify those first, busses, and last-mile delivery trucks (long distance will probably need to stay gas, or maybe hybrids)
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India has more cars than the USA has people. The demographics of India skew your comparison, the USA has a far higher urbanisation rate than India, and many people who live in cities drive cars - they have some phenomenal traffic jams as a result.
No owning a car is not an advertisement that you're a rich arsehole, it's a reflection of where you live and work. Indian cars do not cost the same as a Cybertruck or a F-150. In fact one of the more popular cars in India costs less than the moped the 17 year old n
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Re:How's the charging infrastructure? (Score:4, Informative)
I'm currently Bangalore and we experience multiple powercut a day. That can last from few seconds to few hours.
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I'm currently Bangalore and we experience multiple powercut a day.
Dispatchable demand from EVs can stabilize the grid and reduce power cuts.
Re: How's the charging infrastructure? (Score:2)
Who in India buys a car? It's a very, very small percentage of the population. EV subsidies are nice, but they don't make EVs cheaper to buy/operate than an ICE vehicle I suspect.
Is the electricity grid in India up to the task of recharging EVs as easily as an ICE vehicle can be fueled?
The issues in India go far, far beyond purchase price.
Re: How's the charging infrastructure? (Score:4, Informative)
It's a very, very small percentage of the population.
8% of Indian households own a car.
8% of 1.5B is 120 million people.
EV subsidies are nice
India also subsidizes gasoline.
Subsidies are a great way to buy votes, so all political parties promise them, and none dare to cut them.
Is the electricity grid in India up to the task of recharging EVs
EVs are dispatchable demand. They are mostly charged at night and add little to peak demand.
Re: How's the charging infrastructure? (Score:2)
Can you find 250kW DC fast chargers at many convenient locations when taking long trips? This might be the issue in India.
That's so adorable - you think the issue holding back EV adoption in India is because going on long trips is too inconvenient with an EV that relies on a public charging network?
You really think the average Indian takes enough long-distance road trips (defined as a trip that requires multiple charges to get from start to destination) that an EV doesn't make sense to them?
Re: How's the charging infrastructure? (Score:2)
What charging infrastructure?
I went to Tataâ(TM)s to try out their Nexon EV and asked about superchargers and their locations. A sheepish sales guy told me there was one next door but it didnâ(TM)t work.
Recently on Twitter/X an EV owner related his travails driving from Bangalore to Chennai. Long story short his battery went dead on the highway and he had to get towed. Note that Bangalore is allegedly one of the high tech aware cities in India.
The other problems are almost no apartment complexes h
Re: How's the charging infrastructure? (Score:2, Funny)
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They should maybe subsidize building of toilets
The Indian government spends billions of rupees on toilets.
But the root problem is cultural rather than economic.
and chargers
Chargers are not a significant barrier to EV adoption.
I've had an EV since 2015 and haven't used a public charger in years.
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Chargers are not a significant barrier to EV adoption.
I've had an EV since 2015 and haven't used a public charger in years.
Chargers are not a significant barrier to EV adoption for me.
FTFY
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Is it easy to add 10kW of power consumption to a home?
Sure. Let me just shinny up this pole [travellerspoint.com]. Hey! You want free cable while I'm up here?
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This poor sod's inadequacy complex is so bad that even in his compensation fantasies he has to imagine someone else will do it for him.
We need the electrical equivalent ... (Score:3)
... of the Honda SuperCub for adoption of EVs in Asia to happen.
I'd bet the by far largest part of Indias and South East Asias economic activity runs off of small frame scooters and light motorcycles.
The Honda SuperCub is the prime example of what is needed. It's fuel efficiency is of the charts and second to none. A wire coat hanger and a box of paperclips is a viable source of spare parts and in a pinch you can fuel it with low grade paint thinner. It's design has remained basically unchanged since 1958, the motor was designed by Soichiro Honda himself and has been licensed and copied more than just about any other technical device in history. Most of small frame motorcycles worldwide have a powertrain based on its design. They last a lifetime and then some, you can get share parts in the most remote regions of the world and they're low on those the village smith might just whip up a new crank shaft for you from some rebar he has lying around or something like that. They're nigh indestructible and are valued family heritage even with current day half-nomad in Indias outback and remote afgan or mongol tribes.
The SuperCub alone has sold more than 115 million times, orders of magnitude more than any other powered vehicle. If you see any pictures of a family of 5 in Asia riding a motorcycle, it's very likely a SuperCub.
We need the equivalent of that in electric. Once that happens, adoption will happen with no problem. It might take a while because any monkey with a learning disability can repair Hondas ride with a pocket knife, but that would definitely be the litmus test for true EV adoption.
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We need the equivalent of that in electric.
It's called an e-Bike kit. Like with a motorized hub wheel. If the bike is mangled it can be moved to another bike.
Re:We need the electrical equivalent ... (Score:4, Informative)
Yep, eBikes are fantastic for efficiency, low pollution, and even range anxiety (20 mile range, and you are worried about going 22 miles one day? Pedal harder that one day, done!).
On the other hand they kind of suck for keeping weather off of you, for keeping warm when it is cold (ok, ok, “pedal harder, it’ll keep you warm”), and for keeping you dry when it rains. Basically they have many of the problems of regular bikes. Still they are vastly cheaper than even the cheapest of cars. I use to commute on the bike’s close relative a eScooter, mostly because a folding scooter was under $500 and a folding eBike was very much not (and to be fair it was partly a eBike/scooter commute, and partly a bus so I needed to fold the thing). It was in CA so snow wasn’t an issue, and rain while it was miserable was rarely an issue. I still borrowed my wife’s car a few times on some of the bad rain days (twice at her insistence, and a few more times because I got spoiled by not needing a full change of clothes once I got to work!)
So there might still be a place for an enclosed low cost car with minimal HVAC.
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Yes, I live where the weather is unpleasant much of the year, so I am not trying to bike to work. Luckily I am remote 4 days right now, but I am looking at promoting (have been encouraged to do so, which makes me think I can) and then I will probably have to come to the office for at least 3 for a while, and then move to 2, sigh.
I would love to have an EV and could even reasonably charge it from 120V given my driving habits, but all of our off-street parking is filled with an RV right now, so that's really
Apples and Oranges (Score:4, Informative)
Cheap Gas (Score:3)
India is one of the few countries that hasn't sanctioned Russia, meaning their gas is currently artificially cheap since they are one of the few remaining markets for Russian oil. I'm sure that doesn't help electric car sales.