A recent report from Rocky Mountain Institute on “Breakthrough Batteries” hints that the prices of electric vehicles in India will be competing against vehicles running on petrol and diesel by 2023.
“By 2023, lower capital costs will contribute to a scale-up of EV adoption in markets like India that utilize smaller EVs. Markets like India that use smaller and lighter EVs are expected to become competitive well before markets where larger vehicles dominate”, states the report.
To put that into perspective, that is almost seven years ahead of the expected price adoption margin of the US. This phenomenon is happening due to all those e-scooters and e-rickshaws that you see across the country. In the US, EVs are mainly focused on cars and trucks.
Other reasons for this to happen are the decreasing costs of batteries and the improvements in their overall efficiency. “We can now say with confidence that the age of affordable battery technology is coming, and it’s happening faster than anyone expected,” said Madeline Tyson, senior associate at RMI and lead author of the report.
This will be even seamless if ride-hailing platforms like Uber and Ola adopt electric vehicles in the near future. Ola has already revealed its plans to put 10,000 EVs on the road by 2021. Moreover, the Indian government is also preparing to go all-electric.
On the other side, these improvements and the transition towards electric vehicles will adversely affect traditional fossil fuel vehicles and fossil fuels in general. “Falling battery costs will change the economics of wholesale power markets, potentially stranding investments in new natural gas-fired power generation plants across the globe, even in cold climates”.
So, what do you think of these findings? Are you ready to move to the electric side of transport and mobility? Let us know in the comments.
