Technical Insight
There are no Challenges in Transition to EV that We Cannot Overcome Vitan Jagada Radiance Electric
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ontrary to word spreading around about lack of infrastructure being the biggest roadblock in transition to EV, we believe awareness and trust play a key role in leading a smooth transitioning of one small group at a time. People need to be given a hands on experience on their product, mainly to understand the working of the electric vehicles as they won’t believe in printed or digital media. OEMs and distributors here have to step up in extending support to make this happen to accelerate the transitioning.
Policies play a major role for the EV shift As there are many capable manufacturers building vehicles that would require nil to minimal adjusting to be required when shifting to electric, we believe the central government should bring out more lucrative benefits as the Delhi government is offering, understanding the pollution level of all major cities. All state governments have a subsidy for 2W, 3W & 4 wheeler. The FAME 2 scheme related to electric vehicles with subsidy upto 1.5 Lakh rupees plays a major role. So we think the government is doing well with these policies as it helps to make a shift.
OEMs & distributors need to partner up for building charging stations However big corporations understand that a public mentality or opinion cannot change just with spreading awareness 34 | Telematics Wire | December 2020
and we need to touch each and every life to make them believe. There are charging stations being developed in all major hotspots in every major city. It’s a challenge to set up charging networks across cities and states solving the issue as controlling and maintaining them safely as many do not simply have stable electricity and power theft is common. Manufacturers need to understand that setting up a unique and exclusive charging network for just their vehicles will not be feasible and will lead to much confusion. For e.g. If Hyundai cars charged at only Hyundai charging stations and similarly for every OEM, imagine how much space will be consumed and proximity issues raised if everyone wants to set up a different charging station! The charging station should be universal for every oem, for this the government has to have norms of using a universal charging port. I believe we will get there soon as the market adapts to EV.
Battery Tech Scenario Battery prices are the next big challenge Lead acid batteries will be obsolete within 2 years with five major reasons to it 1. The fire risk they possess. 2. The humongous real estate. 3. The extremely long charging time required. 4. The hefty weight problem. 5. Limited life cycles. With the requirements of the current logistics market, we need to compete with the existing diesel or cng model to be preferred by the fleet owners or individuals as a matter of fact, I cannot
emphasize more on the point, there can be no compromised performance if you want your vehicle preferred over rivals. Coming to the most commonly used vehicular battery currently worldwide, the lithium-ion. Lithium-ion battery packs use very highly priced raw materials. Both vehicle and battery manufacturers have come up with many different ways to cut off the battery cost for the end users. Such as lease options or daily rental or a swappable battery infrastructure. Lithium batteries cost about 40% of the total vehicle cost. Second biggest drawback which branches out to another problem is cell degradation.
Recycling The root problem is lack of battery recycling technologies. Picking an average of battery packs available in the market today, it retains only 80% of its original capacity at the end of 1000 to 2000 charge-discharge cycles which roughly translates to three to five years. In a market where there is so much range anxiety even for new vehicles, this single problem tends to shoo away potential buyers. This can be solved if someone miraculously forms a tie up like Tesla and Panasonic to create a million mile battery pack or in maybe 10 years if the cells become more affordable or a new battery raw material emerges.
Battery worries What immediately strikes people’s minds is that they have to bear 40% of the vehicle cost every 3 to 5 years, unfortunately this
