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Home Blog India overtakes China with the e-rickshaw revolution

India overtakes China with the e-rickshaw revolution

  • Published | 29 October 2018
E-Rickshaw Revolution Sees India Leave China in the Dust as Three-wheeler vehicles constitute a $1.5 billion market and electrifying them can be very beneficial.
India: The South Asian nation is home to about 1.5 million battery-powered, three-wheeled rickshaws – a taskforce bigger than the total number of electric passenger cars sold in China since 2011. However the world's largest auto market dangled significant subsidies to encourage purchases of battery-powered cars, India’s e-movement hardly got a hand from the state. E-rickshaws are quicker, quieter and easier to keep running. They also need less energy to use than the pedal-powered rickshaws. This results in more rides daily and lesser effort for the driver, making e-rickshaws a reasonably favorable investment. The three-wheeler vehicles constitute a $1.5 billion market, controlled by manufacturers like Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. and Kinetic Engineering Ltd. Numerous third parties are also intricate in accumulating the vehicles from parts imported from China. Given that an additional boost to the e-rickshaw market in the country is startups like SmartE, which is a ride-hailing service that hires over 800 e-rickshaws around New Delhi. Meanwhile, Ola, India’s largest ride-hailing startups, has plans to hire 10,000 e-rickshaws in its convoy by April 2019. According to BlueWeave Consulting, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration is presently concentrating on endorsing electric vehicles to be involved in public transportation and convoys, with highlighting on two-wheelers and three-wheelers, taxis and buses. The Ministry of Finance is in the procedure of concluding a strategy to expend approximately $600 million over a period of five years to elevate country’s charging infrastructure as well as to offer better subsidizations on electric buses. NITI Aayog is a government policy institute that is helping in the formulation of this strategy and focusing on electrifying two-wheelers and three-wheelers. India being home to most polluted cities, the country's increasing air pollution makes yet another strong case for higher adoption of e-rickshaws in the country. One of the biggest obstacles to the development of EVs in India is the shortage of charging and battery-swap stations. By the end of 2017, India had just 425 public charging stations. Government and private initiatives are expected to boost this number to 2,800 by 2022. However, some companies are starting to build their own infrastructure. SmartE and Delhi Metro Rail Corp. has hit a deal to deliver charging points for e-rickshaws near 10 stations, with plans to cover all 214 stations by the end of 2020. Another obstacle in the market is the deficiency of bank financing for the traditional rickshaw operators, who are typically low-income workers. If the subsidies get better and easy financing options to become available, this market is unstoppable and will grow significantly in the near future. According to the upcoming report by BlueWeave Consulting, on “Global Electric Vehicle Charging Station market by Charger Type, by Power Output, by Installation Type, by Region- Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends & forecast by 2018-2025”, the expansion of the electric vehicle charging station market is influenced by the growing demand for fuel-efficient, high-performance and low-emission electric vehicles coupled with, government funding, subsidies, and incentives, growing concern toward environmental pollution, and heavy investment from automakers of EVs. The highly populated developing countries like China and India will provide the future market for Electric Vehicles and its charging stations. Thus, due to the increasing demand for electric vehicles across the world, the electric vehicles charging stations market will propel in the years to come.