Can we really ever shift fully to electric cars?

There is a global move to shift completely from petrol/diesel vehicles to electric vehicles (EVs) in the future. Some countries talk of either 100% or some high percentage. But how practical is it considering that in 2021, the percentage of electric cars on the world’s roads is not even 1%! How do you go from less than 1% to even 10% in 10 years, let alone 100% at a later year?

Volvo says they will go fully electric by 2030. The government of India years back had also talked of making India 100% electric by 2030 before revising it to, as declared by the NITI Aayog, sales of vehicles by 2030: 80% two and three-wheeler, 70% commercial cars, 40% buses and 30% private cars.

There are so many obstacles to get to even “Total 10%”. (We are barely touching “Annual 5%” global sales, but that doesn’t do much to the total cars on the roads).

They are very expensive: The Tesla is an amazing Smart Car and quite aspirational. But let’s face it. It’s in the luxury segment, a car for the ultra rich and the upper class with disposable income. While you may get cars in America in the region of $15k-20k, it is only recently that Tesla has been looking to break the below $40k barrier.

Otherwise the one you want may be a cool $100k+. The Tesla is coming to India and the price being quoted is Rs 20 lakh. This at a time when you can get the starting price for a Maruti Alto is in the region of Rs 3 lakh plus.

There’s no point looking at the cheapest EV car either. If you place an EV and a fossil vehicle of the same cost side by side, then the latter beats the former in terms of value for money no matter how you put it. Costs have been coming down year by year and may continue indefinitely or they may meet a roadblock. But price is not the only factor when you look at a public vehicle.

They take too long to charge: How long does it take to fill a petrol or diesel car? We don’t count because once the pump attendant takes the pipe and puts it in your fuel tank, then it’s hardly any time at all. That’s not the case with EVs which may take hours or end or maybe under an hour for some of the premium cars with fast charging stations. While some experts talk of a sweet point being under 30 minutes, that seems more of a marketing gimmick as it’s still far more than the petrol filling time period.

Some startups have talked of coming out with a car battery that will fully recharge in five minutes. It remains to be seen whether that will work on a large scale, how quickly they will be able to ramp up and what the cost factor is. The truth is that as of now electric vehicle charging is miles behind petrol tank filling in terms of speed.

There are so few charging stations: Petrol pumps are quite ubiquitous. They are present all over the world, in both large cities and small towns. They are dotted along the highways and are easy to set up and use. They take minutes per car, so long lines can vanish fast. Big Oil is big in every way.

Comparatively charging stations are very less and will take hours to clear moderate lines. If there are many charging stations in your city, good for you. But if you take your vehicle for weekend getaways then you will have to check whether the highway and town you're going to has charging stations. What if you get transferred and the new city has no charging stations?

While the West is still making some headway, India may not have the resources or money to come out with a nationwide electric charging system that will cover most of its citizens. There is also the issue of compatibility as different companies have different points for charging and you may have to stick to your type of charging station. That’s unlike fossil fuels which is a one pump that fills all vehicles.

They have a very limited range: While an economical car like the Alto could get you more than 800 kilometers on a full tank, it was only very recently that top notch Teslas touched the region of 650kms. The tale is not that good for many other EVs. Not all of them can give the performance of a Tesla.

This is also linked to the ease of filling your tank and time taken to do it and the comfort that fossil fuel cars give is simply not there. Coupled with the ubiquitousness of petrol pumps as compared to charging stations and electric cars will always struggle when any common user looks at regular long-distance travel.

Are they really saving the environment? Whether you manufacture a toy car or petrol car or electric car, all three will use up resources and cause pollution. None of them are really eco-friendly. EV experts are usually talking about fuel and the fact that an electric car doesn’t pollute the roads. But it’s not as simple as that.

Depending on which estimate you take, 80-90% of mankind’s energy needs are met by fossil fuels. If you talk just about electricity, then it’s about two-thirds. So if everyone used electric cars, there would be two-thirds chance that your electric car was powered by fossil fuel. However it would be greater than that because then this higher electricity demand could only be met by fossil fuels.

What if you were charging your car with the help of an old polluting coal plant? Then the EV may have an ecological footprint greater than that of a fossil fuel car. What if the petrol car manufacturer follows better environmental practices than the electric car manufacturer?

What about demand and supply? Growing up we read that Saudi Arabia had the largest reserves of oil. Then it was Venezuela. After fracking, the US sometimes leads the quarterly output with Russia a close second. If you bring in tar sands, Canada is the largest. We have large reserves in the Arctic Sea and Antarctica. They will be freed up if global warming actually happens.

We have a virtually unlimited supply of fossil fuels while everything else is limited or restricted: dams, solar-wind-tidal power. Our best bet at electric power production without fossil fuels is nuclear, but that also is frowned at by environmentalists. The number of new nuclear projects is slow and Fukushima type scares make it worse. With that in mind, it will be very difficult to dismantle the humongous, powerful and ubiquitous fossil fuel ecosystem.

The artificial push and subsidies: Which brings us to the point that there was no demand by the consumers in this segment. Absolutely nobody wanted an electric car years back. Brand new products come and the consumers find useful, economical or life-changing. Markets do change like that. But in terms of overall ease of use and cost: EVs are still far behind for the common man.

This is one market that has been pushed solely by governments under pressure from environmental groups. There is a huge amount of global subsidy involved. For example Norway sells more electric cars than fossil fuel ones. But the subsidy comes from the fact that Norway is in the Top 5 global exporters of natural gas in the world. That’s quite hypocritical. It was estimated that the total subsidy value that Tesla received is well above $2 billion. It’s easier to subsidize during boom time but not so much during recessions.

A tough road ahead: What people don’t realize is that the future is all about Smart Cars. Connected cars. 5G cars. Autonomous cars. We can have both electric Smart Cars and fossil fuel Smart Cars. For the consumer there’s no difference. So it is not a given that the electric vehicle is the future even though everyone is betting big on it.

What if hydrogen fuel takes off? If they can perfect its manufacture, distribution and storage, it is a much better candidate to replace the oil ecosystem for the simple fact that electricity is still dependent on fossil fuels. Hydrogen will truly be much cleaner and a total break from the current paradigm.

Even if all the big automakers go fully electric, smaller car companies may fill the fossil fuel vacuum and become big themselves. It will be difficult for all countries to ban fossil fuel vehicles. More difficult still to force all global citizens not to buy them.

Even if the future appears totally electric, you can’t really bet on it.