According to reports, the total annual sales of different types of electric vehicles such as battery electric vehicles and hybrid electric vehicles in 2019 crossed over the two-million-vehicle mark. Despite the pandemic and economic slowdown, the outlook for electric vehicles (EVs) remains promising due to the rapid pace of innovation. Rapid charging within a few minutes and smart charging are just a few technologies that have already accelerated EV adoption across the world in recent years.

In today’s time, our economies are changing drastically, which is triggered by development in emerging markets, a boost of new technologies, government policies on sustainability, and changing consumer preferences around ownership. Increasing automation and digitalisation have revolutionised other industries, and the auto industry is no exception. Many disruptive technology-driven trends supported these factors in the automotive sector such as connectivity, diverse mobility, autonomous driving, and electrification.

India has set a goal to achieve EV sales accounting for 30% of private cars, 70% of commercial vehicles, and 80% of two and three-wheelers by the year 2030. The Indian EV sector will witness many product rollouts in the years to come. There will be new solutions for some of the longstanding challenges that the industry has been grappling with. In 2021, many EV manufacturers brought in low-cost technologies. Going forward, there will be a surge in investments on these technologies.

Challenges and Solutions

Despite growth, India lags considerably in terms of EV penetration compared to other larger markets. There is a huge scope to work on the number of models, charging infrastructure, developing vendor ecosystem, and providing financial incentives. In a country like India that is still heavily dependent on coal, we need to take stringent steps to achieve our ambitious targets of net zero by 2070.

According to recent research by Accelerated e-Mobility Revolution for India’s Transportation (e-amrit) portal in India, only 7,96,000 Electric vehicles have been registered till December 2021, and the,800 charging stations are installed in public places.

There are many roadblocks which are preventing the widespread adoption of electric vehicles. The Indian government is continually seeking to stimulate the use of electric cars by decreasing the cost of gasoline imports and improving air quality by providing subsidies and other incentives. This big issue stems from legacy investments in the internal combustion engine, as well as the fact that the bulk of component suppliers that are still stuck in the past. The cost of a battery inside an electric vehicle now accounts for 40 to 50 percent of the vehicles overall production cost. The main issue with these raw resources is that they are less easily available and frequently restricted to certain geographical areas, making them more expensive.

To source these raw materials, India’s industry must be able to grow to mitigate the high import costs of the remainder of the battery pack, through various initiatives such as promoting domestic lithium-ion battery cell production plants. High manufacturing and R&D expenses, raw material supply restrictions, and poor production capacity all have an impact. Costs are coming down as a result of increased expenditures in R&D and manufacturing capacity, as well as an increase in the number of EV sales, thus this promises a good chance in the industry’s economies of scale.

In the case of electric vehicles, charging infrastructure refers to the network of EV charging stations and battery swap stations that are required to refuel EVs reliably while on the road. As a result, India’s adoption of electric vehicles is hampered by a large gap and a lack of significant charging infrastructure. The first is to ensure that the system can supply enough energy to swiftly charge a large number of EVs.The second is to ensure that the distribution system is in place to charge the correct vehicles at the right time.