India to order taxi aggregators like Uber, Ola to go electric

* Uber&#x2F;Ola do not own cars, and the owners take out loans to get one. Electric cars can be expensive to be financed for that income group. Uber&#x27;s endgame is to own self-driving cars and not a normal car, atleast that was the dream :).<p>* Indian car companies do not have electric cars (a real car can go for atleast 200kms a charge&#x2F;refill).<p>* A car factory(even non-electric) would take atleast 5 years to start churning cars.<p>* Even in that case, it will have to import 40% of the cost ie batteries as India cannot make them. If it starts today, it can in 10 years.<p>* Import duties of fully assembled, SKD and CKD electric cars is very high makes them uncompetitive to petrol&#x2F;diesel cars.<p>* Direct importing is not viable as it requires certification.<p>* 60% of India&#x27;s electric supply is coal based.<p>And to top it;<p>* Upto 50% of pollution a car will cause is done during production of the car ie before even a kilometre has been driven. Replacing lots of good working cars from the street is not environment friendly.

This is what you call a PR thing by Government. Why? * 2019 - 2026 - That&#x27;s after (5+2) years which means it makes it easy for this current Government to pitch it before next election.<p>* Everyone knows Uber and Ola don&#x27;t own their fleet so who&#x27;ll be accountable?<p>* In Bangalore, Ola was banned for a month or so for a policy violation, only to be revoked just in 24 hours citing Public &#x2F; Traffic &#x2F; Driver&#x27;s livelihood.<p>* Uber and Ola drivers in cities like Bangalore are currently not even getting time for their food (lunch) and for them to sit aside and recharge the car seems another big &#x27;would they ?&#x27;<p>* Any news on Public Policy reg. Internet companies hit front page.<p>Why not the government make better Public transport system? Why don&#x27;t they increase the frequency of Government Bus ? Why don&#x27;t they electrify Public transport?<p>None of these would hail the Government as Elon Musk ish visionary other than this one.

How would this work? As far as I know neither of them owns the vehicles in their “fleet”.<p>Do they just provide incentives for drivers to buy electric vehicles? Or is the government actually expecting them to put company-owned electric vehicles on the streets?

So let&#x27;s jump start the beginning of &quot;S Curve of Electric Adoption&quot; going for cars. 2 or 3 years back, Minister of Transport Mr. Nitin Gadkari had dropped a bombshell right in the middle of some mega Car Event. &quot;I am NOT going to allow you to sell ICE post 2030&quot;. Audience was like ....... Awwwww<p>Battery Mini-Riksaw are already dominating many of the small towns in India right now. Registration for Diesel Tri-wheelers is already stopped in some capital cities. Petrol may be on the way out too within 5 years.

This is a good thing. But I really hope India invests a lot in public transportation and related infrastructure, especially in tier 2 and tier 3 cities.

7 years from now is quite late. Would prefer a 2-3 year deadline, along with plans on how cities will provide chargers before that deadline.

Some more info:<p>&gt;EV sales in India grew three-fold to 3,600 in the year ended March but still account for about 0.1% of the 3.3 million diesel and gasoline cars sold in the country over the period, industry data showed. China&#x27;s electric car sales, meanwhile, rose 62% in 2018 to 1.3 million vehicles.<p>&gt;Motorcycles and scooters sold for commercial purposes, like food delivery or for use by e-commerce companies, will also need to be electric from April 2023, the person added.<p>&gt;Its Ola Electric Mobility unit in March raised ₹400 crore ($58 million) from investors including venture capital fund Tiger Global and Matrix Partners.<p>&gt;It also raised $300 million from Hyundai Motor and Kia Motors and formed a strategic partnership with the South Korean duo to help build India-specific EVs.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.livemint.com&#x2F;politics&#x2F;policy&#x2F;india-set-to-order-uber-ola-other-taxi-aggregators-to-go-electric-1559820588642.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.livemint.com&#x2F;politics&#x2F;policy&#x2F;india-set-to-order-...</a>

Having just been in India, I can safely say that Uber in India is one of the worst uber experiences I have seen, independently of this change.<p>India&#x27;s car policies will make this very difficult.<p>Right now the &quot;made in India&quot; car restrictions means that India doesn&#x27;t share car infrastructure with the rest of the world. From what a local was telling me, car manufacturers typically transfer their tooling from old product lines in other parts of the world when assembly lines are re-tooled to build cheaper India only vehicles.<p>Thankfully, the big cities are so congested that the older model cars with older model safety systems, but this approach won&#x27;t work with EVs, which are not yet mainstream in the rest of the world.<p>My guess is that a modern version of a tuk-tuk would be ideal, but battery production is going to be a very big problem for this. India has the 3rd largest automobile market and a low level of vehicle adoption, but until they fix infrastructure, I don&#x27;t see it happening.

India has aggressive climate change commitments. It is setting long term expectations and providing guidelines to the biggest influencers [Uber&#x2F;Ola]. It gives an indicator to the manufacturers, infra providers, service providers and the end consumers on what to expect. It is in line with their 2025 goals.

While I don&#x27;t know about this specific policy, I&#x27;m happy that the push to electric vehicles (and hopefully carbon-free energy) is happening worldwide. This is one of the big areas we need to do absolutely immediately.<p>Otherlab founder Saul Griffith has a great analysis about why electrifying cars and more of our technology is so necessary in the US here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;otherlab-news&#x2F;decarbonization-and-gnd-b8ddd569de16" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;otherlab-news&#x2F;decarbonization-and-gnd-b8d...</a><p>&gt; &quot;Without changing the size of our homes, or our cars, or fundamentally changing the fabric of our lives, a fully electrified energy economy using non-carbon fuel sources would require less than half of the total amount of energy we use today.&quot;<p>Your next car should be electric.

To everyone recommending adding more restrictions to the cars that can be driven for rideshare companies, please, I don&#x27;t know where you live but India is not at all as rich as your country. There&#x27;s no infrastructure to support electric cars not to mention no drivers who can actually buy it. Here&#x27;s an example, today I rode Uber for one journey for one hour and paid 500 Rs (7 USD). In US I pay more than 10USD for a few miles (may be 15 minutes) only. Do you really think this guy is going to buy an electric car?<p>Yes it&#x27;s a PR campaign, elections may be over but reelected government has to show that its better than past and what better way to make empty promises, which cost nothing.<p>Every point made by ShirsenduK is to the mark about conditions in India.

Ola recently raised $56 million to spin out a dedicated business that focus only on electric vehicles. In March, Power Minister R. K. Singh said the government was aiming to ensure that at least 30% of the country&#x27;s vehicles run on electricity by 2030, a significant dilution of the earlier-stated goal of an all-EV fleet by that year.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;02&#x2F;28&#x2F;ola-ev-business-ola-electric-mobility&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;02&#x2F;28&#x2F;ola-ev-business-ola-electr...</a>

This might be irrelevant to the topic at hand, but the cover image of the news article that the reader first sees is very misleading. It depicts nothing that might hint towards the article talking about Uber, Ola or electrification of their fleets. Yes, there appears to be a traffic jam (which in an indirect way can be linked to Uber and Ola being public modes of transport), but that is because there is a road-show going on related to an election.

Are there domestic EV brands that are doing well there? Or is the expectation that Ola will fund it itself? Or buy foreign brands?

Anyone know roughly how many hours various electric cars can go in a city taxi-driving setting before needing to be recharged?

Is it just me that thinks whenever a western media writes an article about India, they show an image of India in the worst possible way.<p>For ex: Why does this article have to show a picture of a political rally ?

Seems crazy to me. Most taxi and uber&#x2F;gypsy cab drivers run hybrid Priuses because they are the most cost effective and economical vehicles for this purpose in stop and go traffic. Insisting on EV&#x27;s when charging tech is so inefficient and scarce seems hugely problematic for the foreseeable future. Seems a lousy investment for anyone wanting to make money providing a driving service through one of the mobile platform middlemen.

Url changed from <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;06&#x2F;06&#x2F;india-electric-vehicles-2026-uber-ola&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;06&#x2F;06&#x2F;india-electric-vehicles-20...</a>, which points to this.

Based on Uber&#x27;s history, they&#x27;ll probably cook up some scheme to fraudulently register combustion vehicles as electric or find some other shady way around the regulation.