Electric Vehicles: The Future

Though the running and maintenance cost of an electric vehicle is much lower than it's petrol counterpart, the weakest link in an electric vehicle is the traction battery. Presently lithium-ion battery packs, which provide a DC voltage up to 500 V and a power rating of anything from 18 to 50 kilowatt-hours or even more, are used. They cannot store as much energy as a petrol tank.
  Depending upon the model of the car, such batteries can provide a maximum driving range of about 250 km. Though this range is quite sufficient for most city drivers, it poses problems for long distance and highway driving. Though a typical household electrical supply can be used to recharge the battery, it takes seven or more hours to recharge.
  Recharging stations where the battery can be quickly recharged have to be established on a nationwide basis like the existing petrol pumps. One of the presently available solutions for the problem is the plug-in hybrid car. It will have both an electric motor with a rechargeable battery and a gasoline tank and internal combustion engine. The idea is that when the battery is down, the driver need not panic, but switch over to the petrol mode.
  However a plug-in-hybrid will have CO2 equivalent in between a gasoline car and a battery car. Moreover, the batteries are quite expensive at present. The cost is expected to fall as production increases.
  Manufacturers are working on alternatives to lithium-ion batteries like nickel metal hydride  (NiMH), lithium-nickel-manganese-cobalt, lithium-cobalt batteries, which can have higher charge density providing a longer range per charge  (comparable to a petrol car with full tank) and also recharged faster. A Japanese automaker plans to release by 2022 electric vehicles that can run 240 km on a single 15-minutes charge.
  Another promising approach is the development of hydrogen fuel cells in which hydrogen and oxygen undergo chemical reaction to produce electricity. The waste product is just clean water. A fuel cell can provide a much larger driving range and replacing hydrogen fuel cells takes only a few minutes.
  To encourage development of electric vehicles the government has announced an incentive to buy electric vehicles for public use under a programme called Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Electric Vehicles in India  (FAME-India). Under the scheme, eleven cities  (New Delhi, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Mumbai, Lucknow, Jammu, Gauhati, and Bengaluru) have been selected for an incentive of Rs. 437 crores each.
  Many states are already on the go. Delhi is already running electric buses on a trial basis and now has decided to order for 500 electric buses. Himachal Pradesh also has running electric buses in its hilly areas. AS A January 2018, the Bengaluru Metropolitan Transport Company has released a tender for the supply of 150 electric buses. The Energy Efficiency Services Ltd, a Government of India unit, has ordered 10000 electric vehicles from Tata Motors for use in government offices.
  On the manufacturing side, Hyderabad-based Godstone Infratech has announced its plans for the manufacture of 500 electric buses by mid 2018. In addition, a number of other auto manufactures like Renault, Hyundai, Mahindra, Maruti Suzuki, Nissan, Tesla, etc. have plans to release electric cars to the Indian market. Mahindra has already introduced four models of electric cars on Indian roads.
  Two and three-wheelers are not far behind. Right now the number of electric vehicles is still small compared with the petrol/diesel vehicles on the road, but the race is clearly on.  The society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers says that by 2030 about 40% of all vehicles in the country would be electric and this would go up to 100% by 2047.
  With all these future developments, petrol vehicles might one day become museum items.