As a major ecosystem player steering measures to accelerate the India green mobility story, Kinetic Green’s Motwani believes the future belongs to a diverse mix of fuels as per the need and capacity of the product. She emphasized that the overall focus would be on building a well-to-wheel strategy leveraging solar energy, tidal energy, and nuclear energy, to power the charging stations.
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On November 1, 2021, at the UN Climate Summit COP26 in Glasgow, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that India would achieve the net-zero target—where a country is not adding to the overall amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere—by 2070. India’s ambitious net-zero emission target posed an electrifying call of action, which could take it past the current challenges and seize the big opportunities, despite the grim picture that India was the third largest emitter of carbon dioxide by volume in 2020, although its per capita emissions were lower than the world average, according to the UN’s Emissions Gap Report (EGR).
The green-print to achieve this ambitious target is sustainable mobility, and within the spectrum of sustainable mobility, Electrical Vehicle (EV) technology is positioned to be the poster child. Designed to reduce the dependency on traditional fossil fuel-based Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicles, EV-led mobility is galvanising the shift to an environmentally-friendly, low-cost, and net-zero emission landscape worldwide.
When comparing well-to-tank and tank-to-wheel fuel efficiency, the overall efficiency of EV is 77%, while ICE has 13% only, as outlined in the 2022 paper ‘Adoption of EV: Landscape of EV and opportunities for India’, and given this backdrop, EV has been fast emerging as an alternate mainstream transportation system in major countries.
“In powering the transition to a green transport, India, unlike the West, has been focussing on promoting electric two-wheelers, three-wheelers and buses. This is important because 85% of India moves using these products. Only 15% of India use cars as their mode of transport,” emphasised Motwani.
Electric two-wheelers and three-wheelers, India’s ticket to green transport
EV sales in India tripled in 2021 to 14,800 units, according to the Society of Manufacturers of Electric Vehicles (SMEV), while India’s EV sales likely to jump almost three times from 340,000 units in FY 21-22 to about 800,000-900,000 units. As India has been rapidly embracing the Indian EV evolution map, two-wheelers, three-wheelers and buses occupy a central position and promise.
Motwani explained how middle-class India relies on buses or three-wheelers as a means of public transport, while a large demographic uses two-wheelers as a means of daily commute to offices and colleges.
“India is the world’s largest three-wheeler market and the second largest two-wheeler market. And, more importantly, these are all light-mobility and intra-city products, which means they move within a city,” explained Motwani.
An early pioneer, Kinetic Green entered the EV market in 2016 in the electric three-wheeler segment. The Firodia Group company entered the two-wheeler segment in 2021 with the rollout of two e-scooters—Zing and Zoom. In 2022, Kinetic expanded its electric two-wheeler range with the launch of the Zing High-Speed Scooter.
Motwani mentioned that the company, which produces a wide range of battery-operated vehicles such as electric scooters, electric three-wheelers (cargo and passenger) and electric golf-carts and buggies, sees a great potential in the electric two-wheeler space.
“In fact, as we speak, we begin the production of e-Luna. And this is a completely new product, which will build on the core Luna brand values of affordability, convenience, and simplicity. It’s built on a new powertrain as well as a mechanical platform,” highlighted Motwani.
She added that Kinetic is committed to introduce multiple new variants of e-Luna, which will be primarily designed for small-town mobility as well as to seize the big business to business (B2B) delivery opportunity.
“So, I think all of this will lead to a momentum where two-wheelers, three-wheelers, and buses will command a large percentage of electric vehicles—maybe more than 50% as we come closer to 2030—and therefore, not less than 70% in the next 15 to 20 years,” explained Motwani.
Given India’s unique intra-city driven transport landscape, the country doesn’t need large charging infrastructure on highways to promote electric vehicles, as the energy on board option enabling the user to charge the vehicle as per their day’s requirements would just work as well, explained Motwani.
India’s journey to an EV-fuelled future
She added that the Indian government’s pro-EV schemes and policies like the Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Electric Vehicles (FAME) and lower Goods and Services Tax (GST), have already ensured a good beginning to promote electric vehicles in Indian cities. India has reached a 5% penetration of electric vehicles, with new schemes like Production Linked Incentive scheme (PLI) for vehicle and cell manufacturing.
Diving into the Indian government’s pro-EV policy push, Motwani lauded the country’s ‘battery swapping’ policy, which is committed to focus on the safety and performance of batteries. She stressed upon the significance of interoperability as a solution of the future. Interoperability will provide customers the convenience to swap batteries anywhere in the city, while the monopoly of any one market operator would mean that the customer would be forced to use a small loop of battery stations, and they would also face the concern of whether the operator will continue with their services or not; whether they will continue to be cost-effective or not.
So, Motwani recommended some form of interoperability or some kind of a standardisation, which she said, is likely to emerge from the space of requirements of the market and voice-of-customer forcing people and players to come together.
The Kinetic chief highlighted how the government has already been building an EV momentum through its FAME scheme, ensuring that manufacturing of vehicles and building an infrastructure ecosystem go hand-in-hand. However, she added that the government should continue providing incentives to customers, which will help sustain the affordability and attraction quotient of EVs. “So, we’re not asking for supply-side incentives for manufacturers, but demand-side incentives for customers,” said Motwani.
Painting the future of India’s EV acceleration, Motwani noted that the Government of India has been taking all the right initiatives to promote e-mobility in a sustainable and consistent way focusing on two- and three-wheelers, which is the backbone of India’s transport sector.
Looking ahead, Motwani believes it’s important that India moves from hazardous lead-acid operated battery vehicles to only focusing on lighter and energy-efficient lithium-ion battery vehicles and sees big opportunity for women on the shop floor – as women in automobiles have been traditionally restricted to desk jobs such as roles in marketing, finance, and advertising, – with the automobile sector now employing large sections of women as operators, thanks to the rise of automated manufacturing processes.
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Keyword: ET India Rising: Kinetic Green’s Sulajja Firodia Motwani on steering the India EV adoption story