India Needs To Move To EV Rapidly: DR. Jhunjhunwala

India is strongly emerging as the global leader for development, growth and production of electric vehicles (EVs). Tamil Nadu, one of the key southern States of India, is playing major role on product development and manufacturing front. At the same time, one of the oldest and most famous technology institutes of India, IIT-Madras (IITM) has been playing pivotal role in nurturing start-ups for the E-Mobility ecosystem under esteemed guidance of Dr. Ashok Jhunjhunwala (Padma Shri), Institute Professor of IIT-Madras who was also heading the very famous IITM Research Park till very day he delivered this speech before his superannuation, at the India EV Expo & Conference’2024 by Entrepreneur Media as Keynote Speaker at the Chennai Exhibition Centre, Chennai. Dr. Jhunjhunwala, an Ex-Advisor to the Ministry of Power, Government of India and pioneer of Wireless Telephony in the country expressed his views during the inaugural session of India EV Expo, 2024 about why India needed much faster adoption of EVs. Here are the excerpts:

Today, we are moving towards EV. EV is happening, it’s a matter of few years. Let me however point out few important things that is often not talked about. I will start with those, who still opposes nay- sayers, and the person I consider as the passion in chief for EV who is also the Ex-President of the United States of America (USA). He actually uses the statement “cost is too much and don’t go far”. The next statement is “grid is dirty: mostly uses coal”. EV is therefore using coal electricity, so what are we doing? The next is “charging infrastructure do not exist” and finally, the claim that has made “battery and solar panels will create huge waste at the end of life”.

Let me deal with each of the statement. “Cost too much, don’t go far” is a true statement but. I will come to the “but” part till then let’s understand what is happening. It is happening because Battery (energy-container) is 8–10 times heavier and we are coming with new batteries all the time and the gap is very large which is not going to be avoided. One can talk about smaller batteries and swapping is another option, yes it has being done. There are many people who believe that can be a good solution and I agree with them but in some space.

Cost Not A Factor Anymore…

Let me discuss about the further points which are battery swapping and availability of charging infrastructure. The point that I am making, the statement that Trump has claimed that “cost too much don’t go far” is not true anymore. The trump statement is based on the American numbers, and yes, in the US the electric vehicles are very expensive. And I would just say battery swapping is another option, as EV’s without battery costs less than an equivalent ICE vehicle but whereas ICE vehicle requires a low cost petrol tank to store fuel, which is cost efficient from the EV’s with batteries. Grid is very dirty, as it uses mostly coal, gas and oil to generate electricity but I would say the price of solar and wind is falling further, so the cost is low.

Charging infrastructure is another question. I would say that home charging is the best option. AC chargers are available at 3kW, 7kW, 11kW and 22kW at low cost which is connected to single phase/three-phase power supply. Also, public Chargers are being deployed in places like office parking, malls, highways and cinema halls for better and smooth experience of charging. Fast and slow charging depends on the battery size. The larger batteries will require large energy power and any battery which charges under one hour is considered as fast charging.

Waste Management for EV’s…

Battery and solar PV will create huge waste. Nowadays, there are various technologies available for complete recycling of batteries and solar panels where the chances to recover raw material used and reuse is 90- 95%. EV are four times cost efficient than ICE vehicles. EV have 50 times less moving parts. According to various records and researches EV is four-times much energy efficient than petrol vehicles and petrol vehicles’ efficiency is 22% to 25%. Let me tell you that EV motor energy efficiency is 90% to 95%, which helps in reducing import bill and lead India to combat pollution. And it will be a great opportunity for India that the country can allow all the waste materials of EV batteries from all over the world, recycle them and can create many more new batteries. Also, when the demand and supply increases it will require more workforce which will create a great employment opportunity. Let’s take this discussion forward and know more about the battery range and its production.

Battery Pack Manufacturing And Hybrids…

Battery pack manufacturing involves a large number of components which will require large number of ancillary industry and will provide huge amount of jobs. Also, it is needed to be designed for India’s environment conditions which Involves quality thermal design, Careful mechanical design and BMS to ensure maximization of cell life and safe operations under all conditions. I must tell you all that all the chargers and converters are imported from China, which creates a huge import bill.

As we are in our transformation era, it can be easily manufactured in India which will create a huge number of employment all over the country and will decrease the import bill amounts to a great extent. I also would like to ask the industry and vehicle owners to use plug-in hybrid vehicles which works in a more intelligent way as it uses petrol after the electric battery gets discharged which has a capacity of 100 Km per charge, and is a great idea to promote EVs.

But I would never ask to use it for the fleet vehicles as they travel more than 100 Kms a day and will use petrol more than Electric batteries power. If we talk about hybrids, hybrids consist of an IC engine and EV drive train which contains motors with battery. There are two types of hybrids, the one is mild hybrids which recovers part of the energy during downhill or deceleration and use the energy converted from it. The second is strong hybrids which consist of a larger battery and uses the petrol to generate and charge the battery for the power.

Current Scenario Of EVs In India

India will dominate the market when vehicle and fuel for one year cost less than the petrol vehicles. In fact larger commercial vehicles (buses and trucks) for 300 to 500 kms haul will be viable in next three to four years. Also, India needs to move to EV rapidly to free its economy from impact of large oil-imports and need an aggressive local industry for Some R&D and Innovation. We need an alternate to combat traffic and pollution, and the alternative should be electric vehicles, they have to be highly energy efficient, they have to be highly comfortable should use green energy and it should be built on the existing city infrastructure.

India is working on HASHTIC (High-Throughput Autonomous Sustainable Human/Goods Transportation for India’s Next Century) Pods which can take you guaranteed 50 Kms in 20 minutes. Similarly, HASHTIC Pods, autonomous carriages moving on unidirectional rails at 150 KmPH to 200 KmPH. This kind of solutions are required and we will make it possible for end - to -end good deliveries in 24 hours. Finally to sum up, India needs to move to EV rapidly to free its economy from impact of large oil ports. We need aggressive local industry, right policy and conferences like INDIA EV SHOW 2024 which keep on promoting the industry. On the other hand India’s electricity generation should move fully to renewables and for this, we have to be committed to get at a point to maximize the supply and demand. Thank you everyone.