Indian EV manufacturers are five years behind on EV revolution: G20 Sherpa Amitabh Kant

The G20 sherpa noted that public mobility also needed to change.

Indian EV manufacturers are five years behind the EV revolution, and the larger four-wheeler players like Tata and Mahindra should focus on ramping up exports as well to take advantage of the policy shift in the Western world, G20 sherpa Amitabh Kant said at Network 18’s Green Bharat summit in association with Ola Electric.

“China has more than 50 percent EVs, Europe has 23 percent, the US is 10 percent, and India is just 2 percent. Our manufacturers are five years behind the curve," Kant noted, expressing frustration that the Indian industry has not moved too fast to take advantage of shifting policy space.

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Kant highlighted that India could have become one of the primary exporters of EVs, taking advantage of countries like the US levying a 100 percent tariff on China.

“India should be beneficiary of the tariff imposition of China; we are a friendly nation to the US. This is an entrepreneur issue; we should have ramped up on production much earlier,”  he said.

“This is an opportunity for the Tatas, Mahindras and Marutis to become the largest EV manufacturers in the world.”

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Kant also noted that besides exports, this was also a question of survival for legacy players, which will impact growth as automobiles account for 7 percent of the country’s GDP and 34 million jobs.

“You have to manufacture in India, I appreciate start-ups who took the lead in EV and started making EV chargers in India,” Kant noted, hitting out at legacy players for being slow.

The legacy players in the four-wheeler space have been “status-quoists” Kant highlighted pointing out that they are likely to hit capacity constraints within the next few years.

India needs to double its target of electric mobility, with 60 percent of new sales being electric compared with the 30 percent target set earlier, with 100 percent of all new sales becoming electric by 2035 as the country is five years behind other nations.

Kant also expressed his disappointment at the poor take-up of the government programmes, especially the Production Linked Incentive Scheme, announced in 2021 for ACC batteries.

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“The world is doing 1200GW of battery storage; we have 0GW. Announcements are no good, we should crack delivery. We should have done 200GW of battery; you can’t be China-dependent,” he noted.

The G20 sherpa noted that public mobility also needed to change.

“Government should force 2W and 3W to go 100% electric, we need large-scale procurement of buses like we did for LED bulbs,” he pointed out, stressing that the government needs to push for 50,000 e-bus procurements and turning all government and corporate fleet to electric vehicles.

Kant also argued for carbon trading, noting that Indian manufacturers should be allowed to take advantage of carbon trading.

“Allow carbon trading, why should Mahindra and Tatas not earn through carbon trading like Tesla has done,” he said.

Demand side changes

Kant highlighted that there was already a mindset change happening from the consumer side.

“In another 2-3 years no one will buy fossil fuel technology,” he said, but he highlighted that companies also needed to make the move to provide easier access to services.

“If a company like Tesla has opened its IP for fast chargers, so interoperability of fast chargers is the key as we did in digital payments,” Kant said.

Kant called for the 42 most polluted cities to be turned 100% EV, at least in two- and three-wheeler space.

“We need million million fast chargers everything on an app, must crack 300GW of battery manufacturing over the next 2.5 years,” he noted.

Kant said that even though India was not responsible for global warming, it should endeavour to be the first country to urbanise or industrialise by focusing on decarbonization.