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

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.

Comments

Way to go, India!

[OneHundredAndTen]

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.

Re:Way to go, India!

[houstonbofh]

That lack of electricity will make it kinda hard to charge all those electric cars... And most of that electricity that is there comes from coal,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_India#Installed_capacity and I am guessing the significant bump in demand will mean more coal, so how is this helping air pollution again?

Re:Way to go, India!

[ShanghaiBill]

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.

Re:Way to go, India!

[ShanghaiBill]

most of that electricity that is there comes from coal,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_India#Installed_capacity

India is planning to invest $100B in solar between now and 2022. Most installed capacity is coal, but a much smaller fraction of new capacity is coal.

the significant bump in demand will mean more coal, so how is this helping air pollution again?

This point has been beaten to death, but apparently it needs to be repeated yet again: Even when using coal, electric cars produce less CO2 than ICEs. They also produce less other pollution, since a single coal plant scrubber is far more cost effective than thousands of individual catalytic converters on ICE vehicles. Also, the generation can occur outside of cities where far fewer people breathe it.

Re:Way to go, India!

[roc97007]

> Also, the generation can occur outside of cities where far fewer people breathe it.

To go off topic slightly, I've often thought that this is the main reason the majority of US manufacturing occurs in China. So the generation of pollution can occur outside our own cities. Like, way outside.

Re:Way to go, India!

[AmiMoJo]

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.

Re:Way to go, India!

[dbIII]

That's a side effect. It was things like attempting to protect the US steel industry by putting in barriers to imports that resulted in the manufacturing moving to where steel was cheaper.

Re:Way to go, India!

[trawg]

Bill Gates was in India recently and actually posted about this very topic.

tldr, they are putting in a lot of effort:

So far, the progress is impressive. In 2014, when Clean India began, just 42 percent of Indians had access to proper sanitation. Today 63 percent do. And the government has a detailed plan to finish the job by October 2, 2019, the 150th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhiâ(TM)s birth. Officials know which states are on track and which are lagging behind, thanks to a robust reporting system that includes photographing and geotagging each newly installed toilet.

Re:Way to go, India!

[thegarbz]

This is the reason trade barriers were supposed to exist. By comparing the relative benefits your citizens get to the abuse of citizens of other nations at a discount, you enact trade barriers to keep manufacturing and jobs local. A practical example:

The $0.02 you spend per part that goes towards not pouring sludge in the local USA river results in a $0.02 import tariff on China where they could otherwise pour the sludge down the river. If you enact free trade the result is jobs and manufacturing goes to where it becomes cheapest. But politicians seem to be obsessed with selling their own countries to the devil.

It is also one of the more laughable arguments in Brexit where people said they are sick of EU standards stipulating how UK companies manufacture. Well once they are out, they will have to continue following EU standards if they want to sell their products there, and the worst case would be a lower quality product sold locally than exported. But hey sovereignty amirite.

Re:Way to go, India!

[silentcoder]

Nah. Mostly it happened for one simple reason: an autocratic government that doesn't give a damn how many people die on the job - and a billion desperate people, which makes for a labour price no country can ever compete with.

Sorry, not going to happen. No amount of deregulation will ever do it. America can never, again, compete with Chinese labour.

So how do you keep your manufacturing alive, and creating jobs, when you cannot ever be as cheap ? You need to give people a reason to buy your good DESPITE it being more expensive. Germany had all the same price pressures as America- and a much MORE worker-friendly labour law, and kept their manufacturing alive and growing.
Because people buy German goods EVEN though they are more expensive. Germany's "something worth paying more for" was exceptional engineering. The goods are high quality, long lasting, envelope-pushing technology. Their cars were more efficient, more pleasant to drive, and safer if you got in an accident for example.

This is what America failed to do in manufacturing - give people a reason to buy the goods they made. And vertical integration as a business philosophy died an unjust death. That's why America has all those silicon valley companies and even the ones who specialise in hardware no longer make hardware. But that wasn't always the way. For a decade and a half the best selling, most popular, and cheapest computer in the world was the commodore64 - and it achieved that exactly because Commodore was by then the only computer company to still have their own factories. Vertical integration became a key enabler of their engineering expertise. You have a suggestion for a minor modification to the chip which could speed up certain calculations... but you're worried it will overheat. Instead of relying on simulators which must inevitably be conservative in their estimates, they could actually turn on their own factory and make 5 chips with the new design and test them - and see if it worked. And then go mass-production finally with a chip that combined the best results of hundreds of these small inhouse-only test chips - and itself tested extensively in a tiny production run.
That model is pretty much dead today though.

But yes, countries that want to have manufacturing industries today - need to offer something worth paying more for. Because you can never beat China on price, with a billion desperate people and autocratic government that doesn't care what those people think: they can ALWAYS undercut you, no matter how low you go, they WILL go lower.

Re:Way to go, India!

[dunkelfalke]

your logic is flawed - a mass production facility is not required for prototyping.

Power hungry

[unixcorn]

Will India's electric infrastructure handle the additional load? Do they have enough generating capacity for when everyone plugs in their car at night? Finally, will they simply offset the burning of oil with burning coal at power plants? The article was sorely lacking in any substantial information about the plan.

Re:Power hungry

[mspohr]

India just opened the largest solar plant in the world and it only took 8 months to build. Much faster to install solar than anything else. (Coal plants take years and nuclear takes forever)
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/...

India expects to install 10 GW of solar this year:
https://cleantechnica.com/2017...

Electric cars are as clean as the electricity used

[MAXOMENOS]

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.

Range is not the concern there, cost is.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Capital is very expensive there. Most people do not drive very long distances in cars like they do in USA or Europe. For long distance travel the trains are very inexpensive and good. A little grimy but good value for money. So the typical 150km per charge technology is good enough for most Indians.

The main issue is cost. As long as battery car costs more than gas car, it will be difficult to persuade them to buy electric. Second major issue access to charging outlets. Most people park on the street or in apartment car parking spaces. So unless price comes down a lot electric cars will not gain traction there. But, if the imminent inevitable battery technology break through comes through, then they will switch to electric in a hurry. They will find ways to have metered outlets in car parking spaces and even the streets. Third issue is the frequent power cuts and brown outs.

In fact Tesla's wall battery for residential uses will be more attractive to them. Almost all the homes have a couple of truck lead-acid batteries fully charged to run the fridge, a couple of lights, and the TV during the powercuts. Now a days I see ads for "inverter air conditioners". Air conditioners designed to run on AC power generated by the inverter from a 12 v battery. The wave form is a crudely chopped square wave, and it is brutal on the motors. But these aircon motors are designed to handle it.

Re:Range is not the concern there, cost is.

[Anonymous Coward]

>Now a days I see ads for "inverter air conditioners". Air conditioners designed to run on AC power generated by the inverter from a 12 v battery. The wave form is a crudely chopped square wave, and it is brutal on the motors. But these aircon motors are designed to handle it.

I think you have this wrong. Inverter air conditioners use an internal inverter to generate a PWM to power the compressor. The compressor can thus run at whatever speed makes the most sense.

I know it seems counter-intuitive at first, but electric air conditioners are most efficient when they don't turn off. The trouble is, then you move an unnecessary amount of heat out of the home (And thus the inefficiency happens: Start/stop cycles). The inverter technology solves this by being able to run the compressor at various speeds and thus adjusting the level of continuous "cooling"---variable BTU heat extraction. Because they don't have to turn off (unless you want very, very little cooling) they save a bunch of money avoiding the start/stop cycles.

Because the compressor is driven by an inverter-based PWM, dirty power is cleaned up before it reaches the compressor, extending its life. Technically, square waves would be the most efficient power source for one of these A/C units, but I don't know enough of the PWMs design to say if it is advisable or not.

Anyways, the fact they clean up dirty power is just a side effect of the real reason they exist, which is a combination of keeping temperature at a constant level (because they don't have to cycle on/off) and improving efficiency (because those cycles are wasteful).

Re:Electric cars are as clean as the electricity u

[burtosis]

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.

Precisely spot on. Couldn't resist posting that guess what the majority of electricity in India is produced by? coal is 60% of all electricity in India. This actually makes co2 pollution worse than efficient gas engines, or hybrids. Not that it isn't the right move, but they need to couple it with a serious push in green energy or the only thing they will be helping is particulates and smog in the cities, co2 emissions could worsen.

Re:What will happen to all those spent batteries?

[mspohr]

The current Li-ion batteries installed in cars such as the Tesla should last at least 10 years. Of course, they haven't been in the cars 10 years yet but some cars have traveled over 200,000 miles with less than 10% degradation.

Re:What will happen to all those spent batteries?

[ShanghaiBill]

Where are you buying these magical 10-year-plus car batteries?

You can find plenty of them in 10-year-plus Priuses. Even after 10 years, most of them still have 80% or better battery capacity.

Of course, technology has improved, so batteries produced today should last even longer.

Re:Electric cars are as clean as the electricity u

[Solandri]

Natural gas might actually be worse in terms of CO2 emissions.

The energy from burning fossil fuels comes from combining hydrocarbons (chains of carbon and hydrogen) with oxygen in the air to form CO2 and H2O (primarily). Both CO2 and H2O are at a lower energy state than the original hydrocarbon, and thus their formation gives off energy.

Natural gas (CH4) gives you 1 CO2 + 2 H2O. 2 water for each carbon dioxide molecule generated.

Gasoline consists mostly of alkenes and cycloalkenes.

• Alkenes are of the form C(n)H(2n+2), where n=4 to 12. So from C4H10 to C12H26. These result in final products of 4 CO2 + 5 H2O, to 12 CO2 + 13 H2O per carbon atoms.
• Cycloalkenes are of the form C(n)H(2n+2-2r), where r is the number of carbon-carbon bonds. So are always generate more CO2 than the equivalent alkene (same n).

So gasoline only generates 1.25 or fewer water molecules for each carbon dioxide molecule, compared to natural gas at 2 water molecule for each carbon dioxide molecule.

Natural gas produces the most water per CO2 atom of any hydrocarbon, meaning burning it generates the most energy per CO2 atom emitted of any hydrocarbon. Or put another way, for a given amount of energy generated, natural gas does it with the least CO2 emissions of any hydrocarbon (because a greater portion of its energy comes from forming water). Environmentalists just try to badmouth it because they wanted us to switch to renewables, and instead we switched to a cleaner fossil fuel.

Methane (natural gas) is actually about 10x more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. So if you're not gonna burn natural gas to generate energy, you're better off just burning it to convert it into carbon dioxide. Before oil prices rose above about $30/bbl, it wasn't worth it to capture the methane which came up the wells with the petroleum (methane requires high pressure or cryogenic storage). So we were just burning a lot of it without trying to capture its energy. At least now we're using that energy.

Not going to happen

[Gravis Zero]

India doesn't have a complete grid, much less a grid strong enough to recharge a bunch of cars. Solar and battery would work, if they could afford it... or indoor plumbing. There are many issues preventing this from happening but I'm glad they are at least trying.

Re:What will happen to all those spent batteries?

[Robotbeat]

Except like a Prius (but unlike, say, a Leaf), a large battery EV like a Tesla (or a GM Bolt) doesn't need to hit the ends of its capacity. In fact, a Tesla experiences very few cycles (relatively speaking) since the battery is so large. You seem to think that a small battery electric car will last longer than a large battery electric car, but the reality is the opposite (although both the Volt and Prius are special cases as they are plug-in hybrids).

Electric car batteries are designed to last for the entire life of the vehicle, like over 200,000 miles. At some point, I suppose you'd need to replace a car engine, too. Same deal. Car engine is recycled. Electric car battery is recycled.

India will get it done because the materials in car batteries are worth recycling. It's the same reason we don't put car engines in a landfill but instead we scrap them.

Re:Electric cars are as clean as the electricity u

[Robotbeat]

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).

worth doing

[roc97007]

So, yes, it's been pointed out that a great number, maybe the majority, of the population don't have running water or decent sanitation. But any solution can be abandoned by sufficiently enlarging the scope of the problem. Cities in India have a pollution problem that is significantly worse than in the US. That particular problem is worth solving, even though the problems of water and sanitation also need solving.

The possible win I see in this sort of conversion, besides reducing air pollution, is that it makes having a reliable electrical infrastructure more urgent, so maybe that problem will be solved also. And if they solve it with point source solutions like solar panels, those are naturally adaptable for smaller communities that are currently off the grid, which would be another win.

Or, it could all be a scam to fill the pockets of a few officials. We'll just have to see.

Re:Electric cars are as clean as the electricity u

[thegarbz]

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.