India is the 4th largest automotive industry in the world and is rapidly adopting connectivity and other advanced technologies in the mobility segment. The recent approval from the Government of India for the second phase of the Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Electric vehicles (FAME 2) is a clear signal of the country’s positive intent in striding towards green mobility. IET’s Future of Mobility and Transport Panel has brought together experts from the e-mobility industry in India to discuss the technological trends in the e-mobility space and ways of optimising e-mobility use for everyday life. This document gives a brief summary of the discussions that shed light on the progress of e-mobility in India, pressing challenges that lie ahead and the way forward for e-mobility in the country. Experts also discussed the technology driven trends faced by the Indian market and how these will impact mobility behaviour in India.

1. Future of Mobility Series
E-Mobility Trends in India
Emerging trends, challenges and
way ahead

2. Page | 2
The Institution of Engineering and Technology
The IET is one of the world’s largest professional societies for engineers, headquartered in the UK. Soon to turn
150 years, the IET works closely with industry, academia and government in its mission to engineer a better
world. In line with this, the IET also has specific global initiatives around key sectors that are relevant to solving
problems that impact the society at large. In India, the IET has over 13,000 members and has wide ranging
activities in alignment with the overall global IET strategy that also includes sector focus in areas such as Internet
of Things, Education & Skill Development and Transport. Eminent engineers like Shri Ratan Tata, Former
Chairman TATA Sons, N R Narayana Murthy, Chairman Emeritus, Infosys and T V Ramachandran, President,
Broadband India Forum (Ex-Resident Director, Vodafone) are Honorary Fellows of the IET.
It is globally well acknowledged that ‘Mobility and Transport’ sectors are critical for economic growth and that its
future will evolve very differently. Advancements in transportation technologies including electrification, application
of digital technologies, autonomy based on deployment of image recognition, machine learning and AI, creation of
new business models are among key ingredients that will drive disruption and transformation in this sector in the
next decade. Given the diversity and complexity of the socio-economic realities in India, a judicious combination
of engineering and new technologies, blended with timely policy interventions by the Government in Mobility and
Transport, can boost economic growth and employment. It will also positively impact the environment as well as
enhance the quality of life.
About the IET Future of Mobility and Transport Panel
The IET has created a Future of Mobility and Transport (FoMT) Focus (under the aegis of the Transport sector
focus of the IET) in India to bring together the diverse and multidisciplinary stakeholders on to a neutral platform
that can facilitate a variety of actions, developments and provide a well-balanced advisory on policy interventions
needed. While doing so, it is also important to factor that about 35% of India’s population lives in Urban, as
compared to 65% that lives in Rural conditions. Many of the challenges and issues in this context are very
different from those in urban India. It is also important to address the issue of logistics and freight, which as a
proportion of India’s GDP, is significantly higher than established global benchmarks. With Indian e-commerce on
an upward trajectory, the sector is expected to surpass the US to become the second largest in the world by
2034. The opportunities that this presents, both in the urban and rural contexts, are immense.
The vision of the IET FoMT Focus is “To be THE thought platform to help shape the future of mobility and
transport in India that is safe, ubiquitous, sustainable, affordable, reliable & rapid and enhance its role as an
economic enabler.”
If you are interested to play an active role in shaping the future of mobility and transport in India, please write to
us at sectors@theiet.in

3. Page | 3
E-Mobility Trends in India
Summary of emerging trends, challenges and way ahead
Introduction
India is the 4th
largest automotive industry in the world and is rapidly adopting connectivity and other
advanced technologies in the mobility segment. The recent approval from the Government of India for
the second phase of the Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Electric vehicles (FAME 2) is a clear
signal of the country’s positive intent in striding towards green mobility. Subsidies and incentives for
suppliers and manufacturers of batteries, service providers, last-mile connectivity operators and
shared mobility service providers have all been a significant step towards impacting the development
of the electric mobility ecosystem in India.
With the advent of digitisation, increasing automation and new business models, what is the effect on
the Indian automotive industry? What are the technology driven trends faced by the Indian market and
how are they going to impact mobility behaviour?
IET’s Future of Mobility and Transport Panel brought together experts from the e-mobility industry in
India to discuss the technological trends in the e-mobility space and the ways of optimising e-mobility
use for everyday life. This document gives a brief summary of the discussions that shed light on the
progress of e-mobility in India, pressing challenges that lie ahead and the way forward for e-mobility in
the country

4. Page | 4

5. Page | 5
Key Discussion Points
E-mobility- Here and now
• E-mobility is no longer a concept, a pilot or a demonstration project, but is a reality today. It has
a direct economic impact backed by sustainable and environment friendly solutions and affects
the entire vehicle segment making it much more energy efficient. It is an area that has almost no
legacy behaviour. All aspects related to charging, smart grid and infrastructure, skills, business
models and innovations that are required for large scale deployment, have new elements and
trends emerging to redefine them.
• Technology driven trends such as electrification, shared mobility, connectivity and autonomous
driving—are leading the automotive industry. By 2030, it is expected that at least 70% of the
buses across the globe will be electric buses. India is at a nascent stage in this concept but it
can be a fast adopter of e-mobility on a large scale.
• Ecommerce, food and parcel delivery are areas that are consuming extensive three and four
wheeler vehicle delivery application services.
• The total cost of operations of logistic vehicles using e-mobility as a principle works out cheaper
as well.
• The adoption of vehicle rental services is growing exponentially as well, given the low cost and
convenience of the same. Two wheeler rental services in Bangalore have reported an increase
in the number of rides over the past year from a few 100 rides per day to a 100,000 a day as of
December 2019.
Drivers of e-mobility adoption in India
• The e-mobility drive in India is propelled by three primary reasons-
 Petroleum dependency: At a policy level, the first driver of e-mobility in India is the
dependence on petrol which requires immediate attention and a move towards
alternative sources such as electricity, fuel cells, overhead electricity distribution, among
others.
 Environmental pollution: The second driver for e-mobility is the rising number of vehicle
and increasing pollution that demands India to go electric immediately.

6. Page | 6
 Cost reduction: The third reason is that in many applications, using electricity for mobility
is much more cost effective.
• In India, nearly 1200 billion units of electricity are consumed annually. This amount, however,
can be generated using solar energy within the country. For this, the only hindrance that lies
ahead is the energy storage process. India is blessed with solar energy and can show the way
towards sustainable mobility if it can crack the energy storage problem in a techno commercially
efficient manner. If India is able to move more and more towards the renewable domain, the
sustainability argument about using electricity to reduce pollution actually becomes valid.
Electric Vehicle charging and E highways
• Road transportation is the largest contributor of pollution raging from between 30-45% of the
total pollution levels. Producing large commercial vehicles and light duty vehicles that ply on the
roads for more kilometres and number of hours in the day more energy efficient, can make a lot
of difference when the impact on the environment and sustainability is taken into consideration.
• E-highway technologies are compatible with multiple fuel technologies.
• The Indian electrical and utility industry has come a long way to achieve a reliable power supply.
However, distribution grids in different cities and towns across the country need to be able to
support the electrical mobility initiative in the country. Hence, it is important for India to plan and
be ready for the transition to mass electrification of vehicles that is bound to evolve in the next
10 years.
E-mobility and logistics
• Factors that play a key role in last mile logistics include government intervention in terms of
taxes and subsidies for enabling electric vehicles and platformisation of electro mobility.
• Last mile logistics is an area that allows high levels of aggregation and propels companies to
operate in larger fields. Hence, it is important to efficiently optimise the run time of the vehicles
and ensure that the asset is heavily utilised.

7. Page | 7
• Replacing combustion vehicles with EVs will not necessarily result in the kind of cost
economics that should be there as far as electric mobility is concerned. Ensuring a platform
backbone to operate last mile logistics allows bringing in electro mobility in several segments.
Drones and unmanned aerial vehicles
• While talking about electric mobility, the focus is mostly on railways, electric buses, cars, etc.
but drones is a concept that needs to be pushed in India. Drones generate efficiencies across
industries such as oil, gas and mining, energy, precision farming, public safety and events. They
can play an important role in urban and rural India across various areas like goods delivery,
disaster management, among others. Drones are one of the most efficient ways to deliver
goods in terms of the energy, pay load and weight.
• Land based EV technology is expected to directly feed into aerial based EV technology but
there is still a long way to go for India. As of today in terms of actual commercial drone
operations, one of the biggest challenges is endurance. The viability of deploying drone
technology depends on the ability of various industries to provide power, endurance and
solutions.
Battery Swapping Infrastructure Management
• Battery swapping plays an important role in bringing in affordability. The concept of battery
swapping essentially enables reduced wait time for charging and significantly lowers up-front
cost for vehicles.
• Batter swapping essentially helps to reduce upfront cost, cut long charging times, eliminate
elaborate public infrastructure, enhance battery life, allow for proper grid load management and
improve infrastructure utilisation.
• Some of the challenges around batter swapping include: standardisation, interoperability,
ownership of batteries, end of life prediction, and performance of leased battery packs.

8. Page | 8
Battery Recycling
• EVs, the primary consumer of lithium-ion batteries will see over 30% CAGR in the near future,
leading to aggressive demand of lithium and cobalt. Increasing demand for lithium-ion batteries
will exponentially deplete the lithium, cobalt and metal resources in the world. It is expected
that the world will run out of lithium and cobalt resources by the end of 2030.
• Battery recycling, in this context, plays a substantial role to meet the global lithium demand and
hence slow down the process of its depletion. Recycling is also considered to be beneficial for
geo-political, health and environmental reasons.
The way forward for e-mobility in India
• Collaboration between infrastructure (power sources, smart grid, home charging, commercial
charging, grid management), technologies (batteries, motors, power electronics, fuel cells,
connectivity, autonomous, lightweight materials) and business models (focusing on energy as a
service, financing, insurance, mobility as a service, multi-modality) is the key to enable e-
mobility.
• To enable e-mobility in India, it is also important to have certain technologies in place e.g.
moving motor technology in e-mobility away from permanent magnets, enabling trucks with
pantographs to move without battery packs on electric highways. In the power electronic side,
there are white band gap semiconductors, insulated metals and printed circuits that can be
combined to reduce the size of power electronics by one fourth.
• Looking at new technologies, furthering the same and upskilling should be the priority areas to
be focused upon by India from a self-reliance and technology point of view.
• The kind of skills required to deal with challenges in the mobility space are very different at
academic, industry, utility and service sector levels. Hence, skill development is an area that
needs to be majorly focused upon.
• India has very good battery technology, great machine learning and AI capability, growing motor
technology, highly experienced and capable aviation experts but for the drone industry to take
off, there is a need to additionally have a high quality technology integrator.

9. Page | 9
• For the drone industry to survive and mature there is a need to learn from other verticals of the
E-mobility space. Additionally, there is a need to have a synergy of technology and operational
expertise / experience alongside a regulatory vision for support.
• Collaboration with a range of ecosystem players as partners is critical to succeed in the e-
mobility space.
• Large scale deployment of e-mobility requires a detailed cost/benefit analysis and
implementation plan for cities that wish to introduce innovation. Assessing the impact of EVs
and battery charging stations on the electrical network, investigation of possible interactions of
chargers with the network and surrounding customers, improving network performance and
hosting capacity, amongst others, are few areas that need to be focused upon.
• Every city across the country requires a different charging infrastructure and strategy that needs
to be interoperable.
• Implementing e-highways creates a backbone solution for e-mobility. E-highway in simple terms
refers to electrification along the highways. A major part of its implementation lies on ensuring
that plug in hybrid trucks that are plying long distances can charge their batteries that are on
board, wherever electrification is available. Hence it is important to plan and thereafter
implement India’s electrical infrastructure such that it overlaps the road transportation network.
• Regulations around drones need to encompass safety, privacy and security. These need to
focus around pilot and drone registration, protection of data on the drone, seamless and secure
connectivity, reliable drone tracking, protection of flight control commands, confidentiality of data
between drone and operators and flight traceability data.

10. Page | 10
Speakers
Mustafa Wajid,
CEO Chair – Steering
Committee
IET FoMT Focus; MD, Meher
Group
Devendranath AM,
Vice Chair – Urban
Mobility Panel; COO –
Feedback Consulting
Ltd
Amit Kekare,
Head of Future Grids,
Siemens Ltd
Guruprasad Mudlapur,
MD, Bosch Automotive
Electronics
Prabhjot Kaur, CEO,
Centre for Battery
Engineering and EVs,
IIT Madras
Kush Agarwal,
CEO and Pilot,
YelloSkye
Nitin Gupta,
Founder and CEO,
Attero

11. Page | 11
Glimpses from the Event
Disclaimers
This document is owned and maintained by the Institution of Engineering and Technology, India and
the design of the document is © IET India 2020.
The information contained in this document should not be interpreted as a representation of the views
of the IET, nor should it be assumed that it reflects any of its current or future policy. The information
cannot supersede any statutory or contractual requirements or liabilities and is offered without
prejudice.
While the authors, publisher and contributors believe that the information and guidance given in this
work are correct, all parties must rely upon their own skill and judgement while making use of them.
Neither the authors nor the publishers assume any liability to anyone for any loss or damage caused
by an error or omission in the work, as a result of negligence or any other cause.

12. Page | 12
Read more about the Institution of Engineering and Technology and our areas of work at:
india.theiet.org
and
www.theiet.org