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India Aims To Make Every Car Electric By 2030 In Bid To Tackle Pollution (independent.co.uk)

Posted by BeauHD on from the long-term-goals dept.

India's energy minister has unveiled plans for every car sold in the country to be powered by electricity by the year 2030. "The move is intended to lower the cost of importing fuel and lower costs for running vehicles," reports The Independent. From the report: âoeWe are going to introduce electric vehicles in a very big way," coal and mines minister Piyush Goyal said at the Confederation of Indian Industry Annual Session 2017 in New Delhi. "We are going to make electric vehicles self-sufficient... The idea is that by 2030, not a single petrol or diesel car should be sold in the country." Mr Goyal said the electric car industry would need between two and three years of government assistance, but added that he expected the production of the vehicles to be "driven by demand and not subsidy" after that. "The cost of electric vehicles will start to pay for itself for consumers," he said according to the International Business Times. "We would love to see the electric vehicle industry run on its own," he added. An investigation by Greenpeace this year found that as many as 2.3 million deaths occur every year due to air pollution in the country. The report, entitled "Airpocalypse," claimed air pollution had become a "public health and economic crisis" for Indians. It said the number of deaths caused by air pollution was only "a fraction less" than the number of deaths from tobacco use, adding that 3 percent of the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was lost to the levels of toxic smog.

6 of 118 comments (clear)

  1. Way to go, India! by OneHundredAndTen · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If only you were to put that much effort to provide running water, electricity and sanitation to the more than 600 million Indian citizens who lack it, the rest of the world would start taking you seriously.

    1. Re:Way to go, India! by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If only you were to put that much effort to provide running water, electricity and sanitation

      Or maybe they could do more than one thing at a time, and try to solve problems in parallel. Just because someone in Uttar Pradesh doesn't have a flush toilet, doesn't mean that people in Mumbai should just accept suffocating air pollution for the next 13 years.

    2. Re:Way to go, India! by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's a shame massive organisations like the government of over a billion people can only do one thing at a time. Otherwiseâ they could try to help everyone in different ways, simultaneously.

      Imagine if they could work to provide sanitation AND keep the air breathable. Sadly as we all know, governments can only do one thing at a time.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  2. Electric cars are as clean as the electricity used by MAXOMENOS · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Electric cars are fine and dandy, but we still need to produce electricity to power them. Where will that come from? Solar and wind would be the best source as they pollute the least; nuclear is a good option if you're using more modern plant designs. Natural gas might actually be worse in terms of CO2 emissions. Coal would be the worst case scenario; the smoke contains all sorts of pollutants not emitted by modern gasoline engines.

    --
    Finding God in a Dog
  3. Re:Electric cars are as clean as the electricity u by Robotbeat · · Score: 4, Insightful

    India has nuclear power, too. And electric cars (especially with large batteries) are good at smoothing over variable renewables since drivers can charge when power is cheapest (just like people fill up their cars where gas is cheapest).

    And even coal (if burned far from the city and with good scrubbers) beats an asthma-inducing and smog-filled city. A coal power plant also can be run very efficiently. If you include the energy cost needed to refine gasoline, then a good, supercritical steam, multi-stage coal power plant charging an electric car may even have fewer CO2 emissions than a conventional gasoline powered vehicle.

    But India is also close to the equator, which means more sunshine and less seasonal variation in sunlight (northern Germany and the UK are actually terrible for solar for this reason).

  4. Re:Electric cars are as clean as the electricity u by thegarbz · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Coal would be the worst case scenario; the smoke contains all sorts of pollutants not emitted by modern gasoline engines.

    I'm not sure how many more times it needs to be said, but one coal plant is far preferable to the equivalent energy generated in many thousands of small inefficient engines. Extra bonus points for the coal plant not being in the city centre.

    Switching from diesel to 100% coal powered ICE is still a net win for people, but the reality is not going to be 100% coal powered so it's only really a question of how much better it can get, not if it will be better.