One of the first things that need to be understood in this context is that the vehicles need to provide proper value to the people who use them. The Chairman of Maruti Suzuki, RC Bhargava, has stated that unless the organization is sure that the cars are going to be good for the people they are not going to push for them. He has further elaborated that before the promotion the company itself needs to be convinced that it would be able to provide the kind of value that it is known for it would not be pushing for these cars.
The issues
Right now costs seem to be the biggest issue facing these cars but they are not the only ones in this regard. On an average, electric vehicles in India can cover a distance of 120 km when they are fully charged. This means that you cannot really use them for the long drives, which is one of the main reasons why so many people buy cars in India nowadays. Then one also needs to take into account the fact that they are on the slower side. Two of the best battery-driven cars in India can only get up to a maximum of 85 km per hour. This can prove to be unattractive to buyers as well.
Convincing customers in India
People in India are always conscious about the money that they are investing in a product or service. Even if India is able to build the necessary infrastructure as it is now aiming to do by 2030 there would still be a few factors to contend with in this regard – how good the vehicle is and how much will it cost to own the vehicle. In recent times, costs of these cars have gone down and this fuelled demand. However, by the time 2030 comes around the emphasis would have to be on making the vehicles perform better.
Tesla
Tesla is one of the top companies that are looking to make the most of the nascent market over here. The highly rich people of India are already started to pre-order Tesla 3. Incidentally, the product is yet to be launched in India. Yaquta Mandviwala, one of the partners at Bain & Company, a consultancy firm headquartered at Boston, says that a lot needs to be done in order to make sure that most of the cars in 2030 in India are battery-driven. Mandviwala says that it is unrealistic to expect that by the next 10 years India would only have e-cars but at the very least they should occupy a significant portion of the market.
Some important areas for the authorities to focus on
Right now India also needs to focus on two more issues – making sure that the batteries cost lesser than what they do now and creating the perfect infrastructure to make things happen smoothly. Incidentally, India happens to be the fifth-biggest market for cars and vehicles in the whole world. As and when this intended transformation happens it is going to be a stupefying one for sure but right now India is not really ready for these cars.
