EV Dream Still Miles Away

Electric vehicles have remained a buzzword in India for years. But not much has moved on ground due to high upfront costs, range anxiety and charging infrastructure

- Manu Balachandran

A massive shift is underway across the global automotive industry. And India’s automobile industry just doesn’t seem to be pressing the pedal fast enough.

Over the past few months, everyone from General Motors to Ford Motor Company, Volkswagen, and Honda have been making commitments to shift their entire fleet to electric vehicles (EV) over the next few decades. “For General Motors, our most significant carbon impact comes from tailpipe emissions of the vehicles that we sell—in our case, it’s 75 percent,” Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors, wrote on LinkedIn on January 28. “That is why it is so important that we accelerate towards a future in which every vehicle we sell is a zero-emissions vehicle.”

The company now plans to sell only those vehicles that have zero tailpipe emissions by 2035, a significant move by one of the world’s largest automakers. In April, Japanese automaker Honda made it clear that the company intends to only sell EVs and fuel cell vehicles by 2040. In Europe, American automaker Ford said it will only be offering electric cars from 2030. By 2025, Volkswagen wants to build and sell up to 3 million all-electric cars per year with over 50 purely electric-powered vehicles.