Shivkumar Kalyanaraman, who is Program Director, Special Initiatives, IBM Research – India has written an excellent article on how to realise the rapid adoption of Electric Vehicles in India.

He has a highly informative article on ownership vs sharing and how circular economy (products as a service) can play a role in markets like India.

In his article titled “Understanding Shared EV Transportation for India: Electric Cabs vs Electric Buses (& RBT) and Metro Rail” he has this to say:
Conventional wisdom is that electric vehicles are VERY VERY costly for India… Or are they really? How quickly can we see meaningful penetration in India? To first approximation solar was expensive in 2009, but has achieved grid parity now, similarly energy storage and EVs are expensive now, but will be where solar is today by 2020 (i.e. 4-5 year lag w.r.t solar).

Shivkumar goes on to list that since the Indian government has stated that they want to have an aggressive policy of 2030 as a deadline year to have All-Electric Vehicle sales in the automotive space. He talks about how to achieve this via three major areas:
– EVs as Electric Cabs
– Electric Buses and Rapid Bus Transit (RBT)
– (Electric) Metro Transport Systems

The key contributor to the EV affordability case is the dropping price of LiIon batteries, the major cost component of EVs. The recent BNEF forecast indicates a EV learning rate of 20-25% to continue through 2030.