DNA Money Edit: Centre's push will make electric vehicles ubiquitous

Even the mightiest come around the way when the winds of change blow hard enough, goes the old adage. This is exactly what is happening in the automobile industry. R C Bhargava, chairman of the country's largest carmaker by market share Maruti Suzuki India (MSI), while addressing the shareholders at the annual general meeting, said that his company will not hold back in the EV segment.

Bhargava's comments assume significance as the company had earlier shown resistance to the EVs.

Just a few months ago, Kenichi Ayukawa, MD and CEO of the company was quoted as saying that unless it becomes affordable, people will not buy EVs. “You can import cars from a company like Tesla but people are not looking for such options and at this stage limited options are available,” he had said.

The move towards EVs came after the government set up an ambitious deadline of the year 2030 to have all the vehicles produced in India to be electric. As per a report released by Centre's think tank Niti Aayog, the accelerated adoption of electric and shared vehicles could save about $60 billion in diesel and petrol costs while cutting down as much as 1 gigatonne (GT) of carbon emissions for India by 2030. This would result in an annual reduction of 156 million tonne in oil demand, resulting in a net fuel cost saving of approximately Rs 3.9 lakh crore. Now, most of the companies operating in India are either working on EVs or are waiting for the right time to introduce them in the market.

Even the oil companies are feeling the pinch of pull towards EVs. Oil producing countries, mainly from the Middle East, are taking steps towards a life beyond the fossil fuels as governments across the globe are getting more proactive towards alternative sources of energy. The oil companies, are therefore, slowly moving their portfolio to other high-value petroleum products instead of depending upon the conventional transportation fuel.