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Originally Posted by Silver Knight 1. How fast EVs will become the mainstream in India? |
It can go two ways :
1. Consumer driven shift
2. Legislation driven shift
Under consumers, it would be a slow change. It’s not unknown that batteries will advance, making them cheaper, faster to charge and granting more range.
But this will take time. A big break could be brewing in China, as they have lots of cheap EVs ($5,000-20,000) and while I’m not sure about the quality and safety, they sure do have good specs.
Consumer driven change will also take time because there’d be very few early adopters to make companies enter charging infrastructure market — recently lots of companies have started setting up chargers in India, almost 2y to Kona’s launch when we had barely any.
Legislative driven would be more like “make ICE car harder to buy and run” like the Chinese who applied high taxes on ICE cars and even made lottery to get your car registered in Beijing. However this “legislation” also made
Charging infra more common and provide incentive for doing so.
Such were laws that even Toyota had to make an EV for China to continue operating there. Another facet of this legislation driven change is being seen in countries like Norway who have planned to ban ICE sales by 2030.
This could develop EV ecosystem faster but it would make less sense from economic perspective of companies and public, at least until price parity is achieved between EVs and ICE.
By guess would be 2035 for EVs going mainstream in India. (25% or more sales of LMV being EVs)
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2. Will IC engines co-exist with EVs and if yes till how long?
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Yes, for a long time. Norway has plans to ban ICE car
sales in 2030. That doesn’t mean an ICE/hybrid bought in 2029 can be stripped off from the owner under the ban. Only new cars won’t be sold any longer — existing cars will be used — as long as you can maintain it (fuel, parts, servicing).
Especially cars which could be granted “vintage”/“limited” status like exotics, and don’t make up a large part of ICE cars, could be exempt. So in some form, fuel “cars” will coexist with EVs.
I say cars, because trucks and heavy vehicles like construction equipment (our beloved JCB) or emergency vehicles have no electrification push.
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3. What will happen to the existing fuel stations?
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In short term, nothing. Even if 100% new sales of LMV segment become electric miraculously, the old vehicles still exist. They still need the fuel. Even if India banned ICE car sales like norway in 2030 (hypo.scene), a lot of cars will remain functional and need fuel.
In long term, many will introduce EV charging and offer some utility like small general store, some will remain the same — selling fuel as usual.
Why? Well, the push for EVs right now is limited to LMV segments and some electric buses (acquired by state government). The buses would charge at depots.
However, semi trucks and other big trucks, emergency vehicles (fire/ambulance) have no EV push right now. A lot of pumps will be still around, but will earn much lesser. A lot of existing cars will also be around.
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4. Will the existing fuel stations offer normal fuels as well as recharging ports (High tension electric lines and fossil fuels are a deadly combination)?
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A lot of HPCL Petrol pumps have already started EV chargers in their premises.
From the images I see on internet, they’re isolated in one corner of the premises similar to the Tyre filling booths. There must’ve been surveys and verifications regarding this beforehand by engineers and charger OEMs.
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5. Cost of the batteries, in the long term, will the cost of replacing batteries will be more than the fuel cost (Considering a normal car runs 50,000 kms in 5 years)
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It will depend on vehicle — how much range for what battery size. And how much the ICE reference car consumed over that period.
For example the Model 3 in USA has the highest efficiency rating but the Etron Quattro had much lesser. An avg figure for battery prices today is $150/kWh.
One thing about this though, is battery prices are reducing with time. The aim is to get to $100.
So say, you buy an EV today but are talking about long term battery costs, so in 5y the costs would’ve decreased. In 2011, costs were >$1000/kWh. Today it’s $150ish.
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6. What will be the resale value of EVs, considering a 5- to 7-year-old EV may require a battery change. In that case, battery change will negate the savings made compared to an IC engine car.
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That could be true, but one thing to note is that batteries don’t die overnight — and unlike phones, the degradation is much slower.
The capacity decreases with time but this is much slower than phone battery degradation because EVs have liquid cooling but phones do not. Further, the battery is compartmentalised unlike monolithic cells in phones. So degradation is much slower.
Teslas clocked 5-10% degradation over 100,000mi driven. So a car that gave 400km when new, now gives 360km. So seeing that, one might deduct 10-15% from value seeing that. Battery replacement might not at all be needed unless there’s a crippling flaw.
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7. What is the current cost of batteries inside these cars (Tata Nexon, Hyundai Kona, MG ZS EV et al)?
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See point 5. A general rule of thumb nowadays is 150$/kWh.
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8. In future will universal batteries come and then what will happen to the existing EVs?
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If by universal battery, you mean standards like the AA/AAA/C/D types we have for pencil cells, then probably no.
At least not how you imagine. Many EVs use standard
cells — like Tesla uses 18650 cells in S,X and 21700 cells in 3,Y. However, the number of these cells, and thus the weight, size and energy capacity differs between models.
So the big cuboidal battery
pack differs from car to car — so there is, a universal cell, but for the most part the pack differs, and I don’t see a company making standard
packs for their own cars unless the models share same platform and battery size.
Standards between manufacturers are even more far fetched unless it’s some sort of joint venture or platform sharing etc (like ID3 using same platform as Cupra El Born or so on)
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9. Is it too early to switch to an EV, and why not fuel-efficient hybrids?
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There aren’t lot of option in the segment. It has the same scene as Indian EV scene in 2013. Sure USA had got Tesla by then but it was costly even for them, and manufacturers had no clear strategy for them yet.
PHEVs have same issue as BEV — you NEED to plug in to achieve benefits out of it. They’re also very costly segment.
Strong hybrids and mild hybrids could be seen in future, as an attempt by OEMs to stretch out the use of the IC engines that they had invested into and which can be made compliant with pollution norms.
The stricter the norms become, the harder it becomes to comply without partial or full electrification.
Micro hybrids are already here in form of ISG equipped Baleno and Ciaz. It’s the lowest classified hybrid category. People might be even buying these without knowing they’re a hybrid.
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11. Will the price of EVs drop drastically in the future?
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Not as drastically as the last decade. Main driver of prices is battery, and that reduced to 1/6th of their original price in 2011. The price decrease will slow down.
Analysts predict prices reaching $100/kWh by 2023. At some point the prices will become stable. Any change would only root from either a new battery chemistry altogether or by size and weight optimisation at the cells and pack level to reduce manufacturing costs and thus selling costs (through that depends on the battery manufacturer/vehicle OEM)
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12. Should I buy an EV over an IC engine car now?
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It really boils down to
1. How much highway driving is your need (and whether that route has chargers at all)
2. Can you charge the car overnight at home
3. How much can you afford to spend
Are you satisfied with the car as a whole out of the limited electric options before us right now (interior, features, safety, etc) ie would you rather buy a 16L small car like Nexon or would you prefer having a creta or seltos for that money.