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India Aims To Become 100% Electric Vehicle Nation By 2030 (ndtv.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report on NDTV: The Indian government is working on a scheme to provide electric cars on zero down payment for which people can pay out of their savings on expensive fossil fuels, for becoming 100% electric vehicle nation by 2030. "India can become the first country of its size which will run 100 per cent of electric vehicles. We are trying to make this program self-financing," said Piyush Goyal, Power Minister. That's forward thinking. However, it's not clear whether the Indian government is also committing to 100% renewable energy -- because if the electricity comes from coal, it might not help with curtailing the pollution level.

13 of 150 comments (clear)

  1. Coal can be replaced easier than gas engines by JeffTL · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Coal power might not be much cleaner than internal combustion engines in the long run (though possibly more efficient due to economies of scale), but it's easier N faster to replace a power plant as better generation technologies become available or economically feasible than to replace everyone's car. Once the cars are electric, they automatically benefit from any changes in how the electricity is made without any action or investment by the end user.

    1. Re:Coal can be replaced easier than gas engines by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "India's National Solar Mission was approved "in principal" last week by the Prime Minister's Council on Climate Change.
      The solar mega-project, aimed at expanding India's solar capacity from the current 3 megawatts (MW) to a reported 20 gigawatts (GW) by 2020 and 200 GW by 2050, will form the centerpiece of a National Climate Change Strategy and cost an estimated US$20 billion to implement.

      They are not looking to bring more coal online. In fact, this plan is being coupled with solar power generation and wind power generation.

      With worldwide installed solar-generation capacity totalling just 16.5 GW, and India's power generation capacity at 150 GW, the plan is notable for its scale and ambition."

      http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6220

      Couple that plan which the U.S. wants a piece of resulting in action at the WTO, blocking local procurement restrictions. We are talking about a government which is serious about the scale of what it wants done.

      And they are well on the way to doing it, see:
      http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/details/beitrag/india--72-gw-of-utility-scale-solar-plausible-in-fy-2016-17_100022729/

  2. Easier replacement by DrYak · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Once the cars are electric, they automatically benefit from any changes in how the electricity is made without any action or investment by the end user.

    Yes. I totally agree.

    Compare this with the logistics complexities to introduce new types of fuels (either deploying biofuel alternative, or something more fundamentally different like hydrogen).

    Deployment of electric car make subsequently moving to greener power plant easier than moving to greener fuels.

    And that's neglecting even slight advantages of fossil power-plant over cars:
    Power plants only need to be efficient, they don't need to compromise on size and weight to be put inside a travelling car, unlike an internal combustion engine.

    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
    1. Re:Easier replacement by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Informative

      Having a huge number of batteries connected to the grid also helps smooth out renewables and provide backup where the grid itself is unreliable.

      Also, India is trying to build up its car industry. This should help get new technologies developed. I think people are looking at Tesla and thinking that for the first time in decades a new manufacturer can be successful.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  3. Need infrastructure first by sjbe · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "India can become the first country of its size which will run 100 per cent of electric vehicles. We are trying to make this program self-financing,"

    They've got a LOT of electrical infrastructure to fix before this is anything more than a pipe dream. Electric outages in India aren't terribly rare in large parts of the country as of the last time I checked. Not to mention the challenges of installing all the charging infrastructure.

  4. Re:India taxi by alvinrod · · Score: 3, Interesting

    They're called Auto rickshaws and they're actually pretty damned handy. India has something more like traffic loose guidelines more than they have traffic laws, and these make it work. They're a lot more simple in terms of design so it wouldn't be too difficult to build an electric motor and replace the existing one. They're fun as well and far more economical as a short range taxi than European or American cabs. I wouldn't mind seeing them adopted in more American cities where it makes sense, especially in the parts of California where it's typically pleasant.

    The big problem is that India's grid is already over stressed and has problems keeping up as is, and this is in a country where a lot of people live in poverty and don't have any access to power. Putting all of the countries vehicles on that grid isn't going to work without a massive overhaul of the infrastructure. Maybe this plan or goal is the impetus to make that happen as well, but as things currently stand it's utterly impossible even if they could make the electric vehicles inexpensively.

  5. Re:How about 100% indoor plumbing first? by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 2

    False.

    (India is 168th, Best Korea is 196th.)

    --
    Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
  6. Re:Moving the exhaust by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    That's not forward thinking, that is naïve. Replacing all cars by electric ones just means the energy is produced elsewhere. Like in coal powerplants. It just moves the exhaust elsewhere. The energy then needs to be transported (huge in comparison with regular household connections), then stored in batteries. Those batteries are not exactly clean to produce or recycle.

    Don't get me wrong, there's a place for electric cars, but tossing fossil fuel lock stock and barrel is incredibly expensive and frankly just naïve.

    For U.S. maybe. It's got Texas, and fracking oil. Imagine a country needing three times the oil that U.S. requires, without any production of petroleum in the country.

    Now, imagine, all of the petroleum is being purchased at incredibly high prices, and all of the foreign exchange reserves you have are spent on oil. So you must keep exporting everything you make, to meet your oil import bill, instead of promoting consumption led growth in your own country.

    With that kind of an economic structure, replacing all gasoline cars with all electric cars makes imminent sense. And couple that with plans to generate 200GW of solar power, instead of the current 3GW of solar power. It's a radical solution for 1 Billion people, economically, environmentally and in terms of sheer market power. It's going to move the world, instead following the world.

  7. I think you misread the acronym... by tlambert · · Score: 3, Funny

    How about 100% indoor plumbing first?

    Toilets? Starvation?

    Worse. Government. Ever.

    North Korea has a higher GDP per capita!

    False.

    (India is 168th, Best Korea is 196th.)

    GDP doesn't stand for "Gross Domestic Product" in this context.

    It stands for "God Damn Plumbing".

  8. Tata motors going EV by mdsolar · · Score: 2

    Tata, India's largest car maker, is going in for electric vehicles. http://m.carandbike.com/news/t...

  9. We do have good stuff by mdsolar · · Score: 2

    First Solar's CEO was quoted last year saying they will be below $1/watt fully installed by next year.

  10. Re:Well okay by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

    They are obviously expecting prices to fall fast, as is everyone. Tesla are due to announce their $35k (before tax breaks etc) model in a few days. Nissan and Renault are expected to announce 200 mile range models in the same or lower price bracket this year.

    2030 is ambitious but not unreasonable. There will be a lot of used battery packs with hundreds of miles range in them by then too.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  11. Re:Well okay by thegarbz · · Score: 2

    We know electric vehicles cost much and many people are poor,

    And just where did you get that idea? Do you magically think that suddenly everyone will buy a Tesla? In my recent travels to China I asked some of the locals about something I thought was strange, there was a HUGE number of electric motorbikes on the road. The answer was simple, the government limited vehicles with internal combustion engines, but people still needed to get around. Buying a moped and converting it to electric not only got around this ruling but was dirt cheap which was important given the relatively quite poor but still large city I was in.