Heavy vehicles critical to India’s EV push: Experts

The two-day annual flagship event will have multiple sessions on the transition pathways for EVs and the implementation of low-emission zones in cities

Heavy vehicles constitute 3% of the total vehicles on the road but are responsible for 44% of carbon emissions across India. Given the sector’s high pollution contribution and the number of heavy vehicles set to quadruple by 2050, according to Niti Aayog – government regulators and non-government advocates of cleaner air have pushed for a focus on transitioning towards electric vehicles (EVs) in the freight sector.

ICCT India managing director Amit Bhatt, ICCT executive director Drew Kodjak, Union ministry of heavy industries additional secretary Hanif Qureshi, Niti Aayog’s Sudhendu Sinha and Sarika Panda from Rahagiri Foundation. (HT Photo)

Discussing the roadmap to switch to clean transportation on Day 1 of the Indian Clean Transportation Summit, organised by the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) on Wednesday, government officials, industry stakeholders, civil society members, and international and national experts pushed for devising sound financial support and business models to promote wider adoption and local manufacturing of EVs, mainly in the heavy-duty segment.

The two-day annual flagship event will have multiple sessions on the transition pathways for EVs and the implementation of low-emission zones in cities.

Hindustan Times is the media partner for the event.

Big banks’ not being willing to lend money has emerged as a major hindrance, said Hanif Qureshi, additional secretary at the Union ministry of heavy industries.

“Ask any of the big banks: Are they lending to electric trucks (sector)? Only non-banking financial corporations (NBFCs) are lending at higher interest rates.”

Qureshi said that local manufacturing is required not only to grow locally but also to reduce costs. “Technology is not the bigger problem; it’s the economics that can solve the issue of rolling out e-trucks at scale. Unless the big banks start lending, they (manufacturers) cannot scale up the product. We are not looking at a pilot project. We are not looking at building 10,000 trucks or 20,000 trucks. We are looking at building maybe 300,000 to 400,000 trucks every year,” he said.

Qureshi went on to stress that electrification of trucks is a critical step for India because 70% of the freight is transported on roads, compared to the United States, where this figure is 30-40%, or like Europe, where it is under 50%.

Speaking at the same panel, Subhendu J Sinha, adviser at NITI Aayog, the government’s apex policy think-tank, said that the government is already working on the supply-chain management to accelerate the adoption of EVs in India in the trucking sector.

“At least close to 13 to 16 times the GSTs have been rationalised just to ensure that the supply chain is ready,” he said.

He said production-linked incentive (PLI) schemes and EV charging stations built by public sector oil companies are in the works – a target of setting up 22,000 charging stations has been set, of which 17,000 are already operational.

“New research and development initiatives are going to improve upon this charging status. The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) has come up with charging equipment where both AC and DC charging can be utilised,” Sinha said.

Drew Kodjak, executive director of ICCT, who recently spent a year in the White House climate policy office under the Biden administration, advocated a four-point strategy to scale up decarbonisation efforts.

“A successful policy recipe – supply-side regulations, consumer incentives, and expanding the charging infrastructure are in the works in India. The government can steer rather than actually do the investments, but steering is important,” he said.

Finally, manufacturing locally will ensure that all of the new jobs that the government can reap the benefit of new jobs flowing from this transition.