India Aims To Put One Million Electric Vehicles On the Road By Mid-2019 (indiatimes.com)

gubol123 shares a report from The Economic Times: Six leading car makers are eyeing the government's plan to buy 10,000 electric vehicles while policy makers are considering generous fiscal incentives to make their capital and running cost cheaper than petrol cars within five years. Broadly, the aim is to put on roads one million electric three-wheelers and 10,000 electric city buses by mid-2019 and make India the world leader in at least some segments of the market as the country strives to shift entirely to battery-powered transportation by 2030. In six to eight months, 10,000 e-vehicles are expected to be running in the national capital region. The tender to buy 10,000 e-vehicles has already attracted Tata Motors, Hyundai, Nissan, Renault, Maruti Suzuki and Mahindra & Mahindra, and would be quickly followed by a dramatic scaling up of the e-vehicles program. The tender would be awarded by the end of this month and cars would start rolling in by mid-November.

Comments

Might that many ...

[PPH]

... electric vehicles put a strain on their distribution system?

Electric Rickshaws

[aaarrrgggh]

The electric rickshaw would be viable...

Re: Electric Rickshaws

[gubol123]

If you read the source you can see that a lot of them are three wheelers (e-rikshaws)

Re:Electric Rickshaws

[K. S. Kyosuke]

e-bikes are quite possibly the enviromentally cleanest mode of transportation. Or at least they compete with bikes, but don't force you to power the movement with energy through the complicated fertilizer-crop-stomach cycle.

Power source

[manu0601]

Using electric vehicles is nice, but that require extra power generation. What are they planning?

Re: Power source

[Anonymous Coward]

India is also adding thousands of megawatts from all sources. India is expected to be power surplus by 2019.. So they are thinking about it

Re:Power source

[Gravis Zero]

Using electric vehicles is nice, but that require extra power generation. What are they planning?

everything but they really like solar.

the wiki article has lots of info about their growing power systems.

India's renewable energy sector is amongst the world's most active players in renewable energy utilization, especially solar and wind electricity generation. -- wikipedia

Re:Power source

[blindseer]

Nuclear power.

http://www.newindianexpress.co...
http://www.business-standard.c...
http://timesofindia.indiatimes...
https://www.reuters.com/articl...
http://www.hindustantimes.com/...

Sure, in those stories you'll find India planning on adding 2 or 3 GW of solar energy capacity. You'll also see plans to add 7 to 10 GW of nuclear energy capacity. They know they can't rely on the sun and wind alone to keep their economy going.

Re:Power source

[dunkelfalke]

India has over 100GW of renewable capacity - that is about a third of the total capacity. Nuclear is barely a blip on the radar - less than 2% of the total capacity, and judging from the plans for the next decades, even by 2035 nuclear won't overtake wind power that is already installed today. They mostly invest in nuclear to keep their military program from running out of specialists.

Re:Power source

[anon mouse-cow-aard]

It depends on whether the same grid refines oil to make gasoline. Switching to Electric might reduce total electrical needs because refining a gallon of gas, in addition to other inputs, requires between four and six kilowatts. And EV like the hyundai ionic uses less than 300 watts/km. so that corresponds to perhaps as much as 20 kilometers, and a small three wheel EV to go further still. Robert Llewellyn's Volt for Oil puts it nicely. Original sources for this information is the Oil companies themselves in various regulatory filings.

Re:Power source

[angel'o'sphere]

They charge at night? When the plants are idle?

Re:Power source

[angel'o'sphere]

Refineries usually eat their own dog food.
Aka: they use oil to refine and crack oil ...

And if one is interested: pipelines, especially for gas, work the same way. They use the fuel they transport to power the pumps. I always have to shake my head when people are yelling about "transportation losses" of electricity ...

Re:Power source

[anon mouse-cow-aard]

The sources were quoting what the refineries reported they use to refine a gallon of gas, somewhere between four and six kilowatts in addition to any eating of their own dog food. If they weren't making gasoline, that fuel would be available for electric generation, and the difference is even greater. Here's a nerdier link. There are even worse examples, such as getting oil from Alberta's Oil sands, which apparently requires 300 KWh to heat enough material to produce a barrel of crude oil, or about 7 Kwh per gallon of crude, which gets you less than half that after refining. so then we are talking about 14 Kwh to get the oil sand into crude, then another 7 Kwh to refine it, and then add in the transportation.

Re:Power source

[ChrisMaple]

Try again. Your units make no sense.

Re:Power source

[anon mouse-cow-aard]

I got a better source, the hyundai ionic uses only 200 watt-hours/km. To make one gallon of gasoline, a refinery uses at least 4 Kwh. So: 4000/200 = 20 ... meaning the car would go 20 kilometers with the same amount of electricity.

Re:Power source

[blindseer]

They mostly invest in nuclear to keep their military program from running out of specialists.

They need 700MW civilian reactors to do this? And potentially dozens of them? I'd think a much smaller reactor would keep them trained, it would certainly save on costs to make them smaller. It also does not seem to follow given that they intend to double their nuclear power generation capacity in ten years, and double it again in another ten years. Seems to me that they intend to make nuclear power a much larger portion of their electrical generation capacity, not just train their navy crews and such.

Re:Power source

[dunkelfalke]

Like I said, even if they quadruple their nuclear capacity in the next twenty years, it will still be less than the wind capacity today. And I mean not all renewables altogether, just the wind power. Nuclear is used as a backup because they don't want to put all eggs into one basket, not as a major contributor.
And since India is expanding their military nuclear program by building several SSBNs, they obviously need qualified people who can actually build nuclear reactors. A much smaller reactor for the training won't do, especially when you know how Indians work - they really need more people for the same task.

Re:Power source

[blindseer]

A much smaller reactor for the training won't do, especially when you know how Indians work

It doesn't have to be "much smaller" only the same size. A nuclear submarine will have a reactor with an output in the ballpark of 100 MW, perhaps as high as 200 MW and perhaps as low as 80 MW. Nobody would model this with a 1000 MW or even a 500 MW reactor. The reactors in any current or planned nuclear submarine, or surface ship, are light water reactors fueled with highly enriched (25% to 90%) uranium-235. The planned civilian reactors that India is building are dominated by heavy water reactors that will be fueled with natural uranium and/or a plutonium/thorium mix. The light water reactors they plan are probably the largest, and fueled with lightly enriched (less than 5% or 6%) uranium-235.

Tell me something. When schools train people to build and maintain single cylinder 2-cycle gasoline engines for chainsaws and lawnmowers do they teach them with 4-cycle inline-6 diesel engines in dump trucks and bulldozers? The opposite might be true, at least at first, because a small engine that someone can pick up on their own is a good place to start before going to something much heavier, more expensive, and more complex. If the goal is to train people to build and maintain military style reactors then would it not make more sense to, you know, actually build military style reactors?

You could argue that the large nuclear reactors might be used to make plutonium for bombs, and there might actually be some truth to that. The problem with that though is that to make weapon grade plutonium (as opposed to the reactor grade plutonium produced in their planned heavy water reactors) the reactors would be worthless for power production. The process to turn uranium into weapon grade plutonium is to expose the uranium to short bursts of neutrons to maximize Pu-239 and minimize Pu-240. This means turning the reactor on and off constantly. For civil use the production of Pu-239 is desirable since it makes for good utilization of the U-238 in the fuel, but the production of Pu-240 is of little concern as it has little effect on power output. So, while heavy water reactors are good at making plutonium for other reactors to use as fuel they are terrible at making plutonium for weapons.

Nuclear is used as a backup because they don't want to put all eggs into one basket, not as a major contributor.

Define "major contributor". Going from about 5% of current electrical production to something like 25% in 10 years does seem like a shift from a minor contribution to a major contribution. That's just the ten year plan, they don't seem to want to slow down after that.

Re: Wrong priorities

[gubol123]

They are building 100s of millions of them. Here you go https://www.voanews.com/a/on-w... Now do they have your permission to go ahead and work on other priorities

Re:COAL POWER!

[ShanghaiBill]

The electricity in India is made from coal.

50 GW of coal capacity is under construction or planned by 2027.
100 GW of renewable capacity is under construction or planned by 2027.
They are also working on thorium reactors

Re: Wrong priorities

[Anonymous Coward]

India might wipe its filth out in next decade, but the filth i see on this page is here to stay in America. I pity our future generation.

Re:COAL POWER!

[Anonymous Coward]

"The electricity in India is made from coal."

Really! You seem to think you know a lot about India, while the truth remained just a wikipedia search away: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_India

Re:MightyMartian

[AlanObject]

For what its worth in the thread about India's Hyperloop project jma05 informed me that my observations about public transit were invalid because not all states in India are the same and I probably can't name them all anyway and India sends engineers to the U.S. (like who knew). So my comment went from +5 Insightful to -1 Troll based on that. I know where you are coming from.

That's the future

[MoarSauce123]

The US needs to invest into this tech and renewables, not new coal mines.

To put that in perspective:

[hey!]

In 2012 India had about 160 million motorized vehicles of all times registered. This compares to about 260 million vehicles in the US.

There have been a bit over half a million electric vehicles sold here in the US. Assuming nearly all of those are still on the road, India is aiming for roughly 4x the adoption rate of the US.

This seems very doable, because Americans can afford to be picky about vehicles. We want a vehicle that is comfortable, big, fast, and has enough range to take us anywhere we want to go. But even here in major metropolitan cities e-bikes are extremely popular. In India pedicabs are used extensively for both passengers and cargo loads that would be handled by vans in the US.

The whole picture fits together nicely. You have an immense demand for light transportation hat almost doesn't exist in the US. You have serious pollution problems. You have a national effort to develop solar and nuclear electricity generation. Mass production of cheap, lightweight electric vehicle would translate into a huge improvement in standard of living for a lot of people.

Re: Too bad they don't aim...

[murdocj]

Yeah, who cares about the Native Americans who lived in North America for 10,000 years, history started when the white men showed up.

Thorium reactors ..

[niks42]

From Wikipedia: The country published about twice the number of papers on thorium as its nearest competitors, during each of the years from 2002 to 2006. The Indian nuclear establishment estimates that the country could produce 500 GWe for at least four centuries using just the country’s economically extractable thorium reserves.

Maybe A Wrong Number

[JimSadler]

I seriously doubt that enough batteries can be produced to power 1,000,000 electric cars in less than two years.Simply building the factories to make the batteries will take several years. It is a wonderful idea but the time table is not based upon reality. These cars would also need to be affordable and the population of India is not known for being rich.

Re:Maybe A Wrong Number

[HornWumpus]

When they say 'cars' we'd say 'golf carts'. But that's actually a good vehicle for many uses and roads.

Re: Too bad they don't aim...

[HornWumpus]

Steel age cultures wipe out stone age cultures whenever they meet. Duh.

Re:COAL POWER!

[HornWumpus]

So you agree with him? Hint: Capacity factor.

Re:meh

[HornWumpus]

In the 1970s India paid men to get vasectomies.

Many men that already had their families literally got dozens of vasectomies.

Capacity factor

[Latent Heat]

You must be new around here!

Re: Too bad they don't aim...

[CmdrTamale]

history started when the white men showed up

and started writing it down with recording technology, that is,

pen + paper.+ writen language