The adoption of electric vehicles is rapidly growing worldwide. How do electric vehicles contribute to reducing carbon emissions and what are the key benefits they offer compared to traditional combustion engine vehicles?

In the need for sustainable and cheaper transportation means, Electric Vehicles (EV) are gaining global popularity over internal combustion engine vehicles (ICE-Vs). EV sales in India are expected to cross 50 million by 2030.

• EVs hold greater benefits over ICE-V such lower Carbon footprint, reduced running cost, simpler design and manufacturing.
• For Carbon emissions, an ICE-V runs primarily on fossil fuels which are carbon-based fuels and releases high quantities of Carbon dioxide and other pollutants into the atmosphere.
• Whereas an EV is powered by an electric motor which runs on stored electricity in a lithium-based battery. If the electricity is produced from Renewable energy like Solar and Wind, then the Carbon emissions over a long-period can be significantly lower than ICE-V. However, with advent of Biofuels for ICE-V, Carbon emissions of ICE-V can also be minimized.
• EVs also offer simple manufacturing assembly where the number of machine and moving parts are way lower in number than ICE-V, thus it holds advantages for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises to manufacture EVs over ICE-V. The number of EV startups at a small-scale is evident.
• Running cost of any transportation system is major consideration for transitional society like India, as the prices of solar power has been consistently lower than any other source. Thus, for a solar rich and an aspirational developing country, EVs are practical choices. Apart from this, EVs also offer better ride experience like power and efficiency.
• Consequently, Government has initiated National Electric Mobility Mission Plan 2020, FAME to popularise and Incentivise EVs in Indian Market. Also, initiatives like National Solar Mission, SAMARTH, PM-KUSUM are making electricity production more carbon neutral.
• However, concerns like limited charging infrastructure proliferation, high initial cost of EVs, higher dependence of critical mineral resources like lithium and cobalt are slowing the adoption of EVs.

Thus, there is still high scope of scaling-up of EV Manufacturing to reduce overall carbon-footprint. Also, the network of grid-connected roads needs to consistently rise to realise objectives of National Electric Mobility Mission Plan 2020.