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.

Comments

Coal can be replaced easier than gas engines

[JeffTL]

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.

Easier replacement

[DrYak]

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.

Re:Easier replacement

[AmiMoJo]

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.

Re:Moving the exhaust

[Anonymous Coward]

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.