India seeks China's help to power electric vehicle market

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In a bid to curb vehicular emissions choking leading Indian cities and reduce soaring oil bill, policymakers expressed their interest to collaborate with China to boost the nascent electric vehicle (EV) market.

The country plans to increase EVs sale to 30 percent by 2030. However, due to the lack of a clear policy, automobile manufacturers and consumers are treading cautiously, leading to tardy sales. A severe scarcity of charging stations has further caused significant concern among EV buyers.

Electric car sales in the last fiscal year dropped to 1200 units from 2000 in 2016-2017. Electric scooters sales have picked up doubling its sales in 2018, numbers are likely to cross two million a year mark by 2030, Society of Manufacturers of Electric Vehicles survey maintained.

“For India's ambitious objective of achieving electric mobility by 2030, we see very substantive role for the Chinese EV players,” Anil Srivastava, Principal Advisor at NITI Aayog, said at a three-day event organized by EV100, China's private electric vehicle association.

Lack of enough charging stations in India discourages consumers from buying an electric car.

Through EVs, India wants to control 20 billion U.S. dollar expenditure on oil imports and reduce emissions by 33 to 35 percent.

According to the WHO, 14 out of 20 world's worst polluted cities are in India. In the country's capital, New Delhi, vehicular traffic contributes nearly nine percent to 30 percent of the fine particles - PM10 and PM2.5 - of the total pollution during winter months.

Fueled by generous subsidies, China accounted for nearly 35 percent of global electric car sales. Apart from cars, the government is replacing fossil-fuel-powered buses too. Southern city of Shenzhen switched over to electric buses and phased out diesel-fueled bus fleet, drastically curbing air pollution level in the city.

For Chinese EV manufacturers staring at substantial subsidy reduction in the next five years, Indian new energy vehicle market might be a lucrative venture. “Given the market size of India and China together, there is huge cooperation potential for EV industries of both countries,” Chen Qingtai, President of China EV100 said.

(Top Image: More than 60 new models of electric cars were launched at an auto show in Guangzhou, south China, November 16, 2018. /VCG Photo)