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August 2008 Edition

40 paise a km, no pollution, no dents

Umesh Anand
New Delhi

It seemed like just another showroom about to open in the Lajpat Nagar Market in south Delhi. But when the wraps came off, its bright orange and yellow décor set it apart from a sea of conventional shop fronts. And then, lo and behold, a small, exotic electric car went on display.

What was this oddity? Middle-class families out shopping stopped to check it out.  Kids scrambled to get behind the wheel. Some mums did likewise, no doubt eager to break free. Dads asked about the price and tried to figure out the technology. Only 40 paise a kilometre running cost? Amazing! Just plug it into a socket and charge it? Really, is it that simple? No clutch, no maintenance, no pollution?

Delhi is a city so crazy about cars that it puts some 270,000 new ones on its streets each year. In Lajpat Nagar you will find hardcore worshippers of combustion engines. There are families that own two and three cars with a scooter and a motorcycle thrown in for good measure. It is here that the Reva, the world’s most popular electric car, has finally made a full-fledged debut in its flamboyant colours. The Reva has at least a thousand takers in London and is getting noticed and picked up in other environmentally conscious cities of Europe where it has been test marketed.

It has landed in Delhi all of 7 years after it was launched thanks to a 29.5 per cent subsidy provided last month by the Delhi government. With the subsidy, you can now buy a basic Reva for just Rs 3 lakhs. A top-end version with remote AC and heater, stereo, leather seats, security system and so on comes for Rs 3.78 lakhs on road. ICICI Bank provides loans. The Reva is manufactured by Chetan Maini at the Reva Electric Car Company in Bangalore. It is Chetan’s pet project. The Maini family’s business, founded by the father, involves automobile components and battery operated material handling equipment.  

What has made the Delhi government wake up to the virtues of the Reva?

• Right on the top of the list of reasons is runaway pollution caused by, among other things, the fumes coming out of personal cars. When it comes to air quality, Delhi is a downright unhealthy city. CNG was introduced for buses and the Sheila Diskhit government was quick to pick up awards for green governance. But the reality is that nothing was done to rein in private transport. On the whole pollution has grown and the city is choking.

• Next comes congestion and the absence of parking. In Delhi these days you crawl from one jam to the next. Parking lots are overflowing.

• Then there is global warming casting a shadow over the future of the planet. A city’s persona is its biggest asset and decides who will live there, the tourists it will attract and how much investment it can hope to bring in. These days every city needs to worry about its carbon dioxide emissions. Public transport is one way out because it reduces the number of vehicles on the roads. Clean personal transport like the Reva electric car is another.

London exempts electric cars like the Reva from eight pounds a day congestion charge and provides free parking  and so on that add up to benefits of over 5000 pounds a year!. Most modern cities are going the same way. In Beijing, subsidies and other incentives have been used to sponsor the switch to electric vehicles in preparation for the Olympics.

OIL PRICES: Delhi’s realisation hasn’t come a day too soon. It also coincides with the spiralling prices of petrol and diesel. The economies of countries and cities will have to learn to come to terms with this reality. Also, the very shape of cities is changing. Suburban living is passé. Inner cores that once sustained urban aspirations are being revived. The new city is the old city with modern technologies.

If you think you can commute  50 km a day in a car and survive you are sadly mistaken. Not only is it ruinous for family budgets, it has become unacceptable in environmental terms. Cities that don’t acknowledge this reality will find themselves getting left out. To be world class they need to be targeting zero emissions.

It is into this scenario that the Reva fits. It was really a car ahead of its time when it was conceived of and launched by Chetan Maini.  Had it then been given recognition and concessions as a new technology, it would perhaps gone into extensive use across India and been identified as an iconic vehicle globally. If there were just 40,000 Revas on the road in India with an annual driving distance of 12,000 km per vehicle, the harmful effects of 130,000 tonnes of pollutants would be annulled.

DELHI’S  STRATEGY: Significantly, the Delhi government’s recent decision to now encourage the Reva is part of a larger strategy to encourage clean personal vehicles, promote public transport and provide incentives for non-polluting technologies. The story is in the strategy and the big question now is whether Delhi will become the model for other cities in India that need to urgently deal with congested roads and polluted air.

Delhi’s subsidy for encouraging electric vehicles comes from a levy of 25 paise per litre of diesel sold. As Indian cities go, this an innovation because it means that polluters pay for supporting struggling cleaner technologies.  Delhi has already led the way in using compressed natural gas (CNG) for buses and autos. In recent days it has decided to discourage the use of large cars by making parking more expensive. Parking on the whole is going to be put on a centralised system accessed by smart cards. On the one hand this will mean more revenue for the municipal corporation. On the other hand it will make people think about shifting to public transport. 

The first effort to install a bus rapid transit (BRT) system in Delhi has been the target of protests by car owners encouraged by local media eager to ride a wave of middle-class remorse. But in a city where more than 60 per cent of the residents don’t use cars, a BRT will be inevitable. Already low-floor buses have made an appearance and are being appreciated. The BRT trial was also welcomed by commuters and the majority of drivers because it brought sanity to the road.

The BRT has been deferred, but no one doubts that it will come to Delhi in much the same way as it is being put in place in cities across the world. If the Delhi state government hadn’t lost its nerve in the face of a shrill media, it could have seized the moment and rewritten the future of urban transportation in India. The question now is whether the policies Delhi is trying to put in place will also become a national goal? Can a combination of clean fuels, electric vehicles, a switch to public transport and disincentives for personal transport be made the norm for cities?

A national policy can work wonders. “China had just 40,000 electric two-wheelers in 1999. Policy made it 18 million this year,” says Maini in an interview to Civil Society in his new showroom. “It was all because China decided it was necessary to clean up its act for the 2008 Olympics. The cities in China also serve as a catalyst. In the rural areas where there is no regulation 70 per cent of the purchases are electric vehicles.”

“Delhi can lead the way in India,” says Maini. Its model of a cess on polluting diesel to provide a subsidy for clean electric vehicles can be followed by other cities. Similarly, if the Delhi government provides facilities for recharging electric vehicles in public places and companies come forward and buy electric vehicles, more and more people will start using them. “The idea is to create visibility for electric vehicles so that people see them as a practical means of transport within a city. In London, the Reva became visible when we crossed 400 cars. London is a much bigger city than Delhi but its congestion zones are smaller. In Delhi too when people begin using the Reva it will get seen and become popular,” predicts Maini.

Popularity is a combination of many factors. If shopping malls for instance create recharging points, awareness will grow. Similarly, if companies encourage their employees to use electric vehicles and give them free charging facilities, usage will increase. It is already happening at Infosys and Wipro in Bangalore. Both companies, says Maini, have designated Green Zones for parking and charging electric cars.

London has over 160 recharging points activated by prepaid smart cards and plans are to increase them to 1,000 this year.  If Delhi were to do the same together with its new tax incentives, cess on diesel and so on, the efforts of the Capital’s administrators could be showcased for the rest of the country. “You need policies to create an environment to encourage people to use a technology. After that market forces can take over,” says Maini. The big incentive to use the Reva is of course the rising price of oil. In Bangalore it is Rs 57, in Delhi it is Rs 50, in London it is Rs 115 a litre. “In London people say that what they pay to fill their tanks once is what it costs them to run the Reva for a full year,” says Maini.        

Reva’s USP is that it is an inner city car good for quick short trips on a daily basis. A single charge of the battery provides 80 km. The Reva is upgradeable to newer battery technologies such as lithium ion that will extend the range to 140 km and will be available in the future. The body is dent proof. So, each time the car takes a small knock, the body absorbs the shock and comes back to normal. A scratch proof body is also available and most people buying the high-end model are happy to go in for it.

The car seats four people, but it is cramped at the back. The important thing is to get used to driving a car that is intrinsically different. It is not meant to be lavishly spacious. It wasn’t designed to thunder down the street. It is a personal car in which you can get around nimbly, in thrifty spurts. Since the Reva does not have gears, it is easy to drive. It gets high marks for manoeuvrability. You get in, switch it on and drive off. All that you need to do is alternate between accelerator and brake.

We are asked Maini what technological improvements the Reva had been through since it was launched. “We have moved from a DC drive train to an AC drive train. This has made the motor 40 per cent more powerful,” said Maini. The car has also been made more energy efficient by 10 per cent. Every time you brake on the Reva, the motor becomes a generator and charges the battery.  There is also a unique hill restraint feature that prevents the car from rolling down a slope when you remove your foot from the accelerator.
There have been improvements in the onboard electronics as well. Heating, electronically controlled air conditioning and central locking are all available. Heating and cooling for the seats has also been introduced.

The Reva now has disc brakes and anti-roll bars. There have been improvements on the rear suspension to make higher speeds up to 80 kmph possible. The Reva has zero emissions and its motor is a completely sealed unit that allows the car to pass through three feet of water without stalling.

SMALL WORLD: Several things have given the Reva new importance. Oil prices of course top the list. Everyone’s worried. But more importantly, it is a small world these days. People who travel abroad see the Reva in use in other countries and talk about it. They come back here and think about buying one.

It is also true that by virtue of having been around for a decade, the Reva has takers in the Indian market. These are people who could be owners of expensive luxury vehicles which they drive from time to time, but use the Reva for their daily chores. They are seen as responsible intelligent citizens and their preferences become something to aspire to. Like most small brands fighting uphill market battles, Maini has come to read this dynamic well. Converts bring him customers and customers quickly become converts.     Thus far it has been a slow and almost painful process.

But suddenly the pace is picking up. Because it is a small world, policy changes elsewhere define consumer preferences that come to be acquired here. Similarly, the Delhi government’s incentives for electric vehicles could be the hefty push that is needed to change regulation across India. 

MAINI’S MISSION: Maini’s has been the ultimate garage operation: dreaming, innovating and standardising. He believes big strides similar to in information technology are possible if small teams with technological vision are allowed to develop new products. It was in the University of Michigan that Maini as a student got involved in a project on solar electric cars. The US department of energy supported the project, which aimed to make a car that would run on solar energy for 3,000 km across America.

The student team from Michigan was sponsored to go to Australia to participate in the solar challenge there in November 1990. The race was from Darwin to Adelaide and the team finished third. “What really excited me was that we could do 3.200 km on solar energy and the potential of this in a country like India,” says Maini. With graduation behind him, Maini joined a start-up to manufacture electric cars. It was a firm founded by Dr Lon Bell of Amerigon. He soon went back to campus, now at Stanford, to develop more specialised skills. While at Stanford he worked on developing a hybrid electric car, the kind which Toyota and Honda market now.

Maini went back to Amerigon and suggested to Dr Lon Bell that there was a huge market for electric vehicles in India and China waiting to be explored.  It was at that time, in 1994, that the Maini Amerigon Car Compay was launched to produce electric vehicles. The company later took the current name of the Reva Electric Car Company.

The Reva was developed by teams in the US and India over seven years with Maini flying up and down. From the research efforts emerged eight global patents and several other innovations. These efforts make the car one-third lower than the price of comparative technology elsewhere in the world. But little has been done to support a path-breaking Indian technology. The factory in Bangalore can produce 6,000 cars a year, but in the absence of incentives the capacity has been seriously underutilised. In 1997-98 the Reva Car Company was given a subsidy of Rs 1 lakh per car and the excise was set at eight per cent while it was 40 per cent for other cars. But by the time the Reva was ready to be produced after two years, the subsidy vanished and excise on all cars was down to 16 per cent. This was a crippling blow and the Reva was reduced from a possible mass produced energy efficient vehicle to a fad for those who would seek it out and be able to afford to pay for it.

THE FUTURE: So what does the future hold for the Reva? A lot will depend on the policy support it receives. As much as clean technology vehicles are required, the market is not structured for them. The kind of tax incentives that the Delhi government has announced will be required on a much bigger scale. In addition, it will be necessary to show some creativity in sponsoring the use of electric vehicles. Parking fees could be waived or reduced. Recharging points could be set up in public spaces.

Maini has a point when he says that a new technology blossoms when everyone comes together to make it succeed. So, it is important for companies, government, individuals and perhaps even activist groups to create an environment in which electric vehicles become popular. Every shopping mall that has the facility to recharge a car or a two-wheeler run on battery will be doing its bit. So also companies that give their staff free recharging facilities. Experience shows it is not so much the cost as the vision.

The Reva could lead the way for battery-operated two-wheelers, which are already being marketed, school buses, delivery vans and three-wheelers. Much depends on how governments come forward and make it possible for manufacturers to scale up. Till that happens, electric vehicles will be driven more by the personal passion of entrepreneurs than the large-scale use that will make them affordable and seriously change the way we live.

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