Week 5 (Jan 26 - Feb 1)
This week's substack includes news about customs duty hikes for EVs in India, Tata's plans to build a holistic EV ecosystem, Bangalore based Numocity fund raise and Pune's e-bus experiment.
Standardising charging infrastructure is critical for EV adoption in India. The standardisation of EV charging infrastructure is key to a successful transition towards electric vehicles. As of now, there are three primary global standards being followed for setting up charging stations.
GB/T: Popularised in China, GB/T (Guobiao standards) supports both level 2 and level 3 AC, may even support three-phase AC, and supports 250 volt and 400 volt DC. Cars supported: Tata Tigor, Mahindar eVerito. If your car has a Chinese imported battery, chances are high it use GB/T Connector
CCS: CCS Stands for Combined Charging Standards and as the name represents it combines single-phase AC, three-phase AC and DC high-speed charging in both Europe and the US – all in a single, easy to use system. Cars supported: Tata Nexon EV Hyundai Kona and MG ZS EV.
CHADeMo: CHAdeMO is a rapid charging standard, meaning it can supply a vehicle’s battery with anywhere between 6Kw to 150Kw, at the moment. This was formed by an association of Japanese Auto Manufacturers and is mostly common in Japan.
Bharat Charging Standards: The government of India finalized charging infrastructure protocols for different combination of voltage and speed of charging and published this standardization document on 21st Nov 2017. The chargers as per this standard are classified according to power rating instead of the rate at which they charge.
Tata launches 'ecosystem' to kickstart Indian EV Tata Group recently annouced the creation of UniEVerse, a holistic EV ecosystem consisting of several Group Companies to drive faster EV adoption in India. Per this, EV cars will be sold through dealers & Croma stores, while electric chargers will be setup by Tata Power. To reduce the import dependence of batteries, Tata Chemicals is setting up a battery recycling facility and a manufacturing facility is on the radar. The manufacturing facility will have an initialy capacity of 200Mwh which would be scaled to 2Gwh based on demand.
Bengaluru-Based EV Startup Numocity Raises Funding. Numocity is a fleet focused intelligent middleware platform for electric vehicle charging and battery swapping. Its IoT + RFID solution sits in between the battery, charging equipment and the grid to improve utilisation and ROI not just for the car but also the battery & charger. With the accelaration of EV adoption in the country, I foresee several challenging problems that Numocity might be tackling - load balancing of grid, improving charger utilisation and increasing fleet uptime. Their solution works equally well with battery swapping and EV charging. Investors who led the round are Ideaspring Capital, Rebright Partners, and ABB Technology Ventures (ATV).
Can electric buses solve India’s transit crisis? In 2019, Pune became the first Indian city to deploy e-Buses. PMPML, the city’s transit authority is running 133 Olectra-BYD buses on an asset light model - buses are owned, operated and maintained by the manufacturer with PMPML’s role limited to scheduling routes and testing the performance. This may offer a blueprint which other transit authorities can use to revitalize public transportation in India. India has committed & approved 5095 intracity buses under the FAME II scheme
Customs duty on Electric Vehicles increased. Imported EVs such as MG ZS EV and Hyundai Kona EV are set to get more expensive from April 1, 2020 as the Government announced hikes in custom duty rates. This is inline with New Delhi’s strategy to encourage domestic production as part of its Phased Manufacturing Plan. Customs duty has been increased on:
Completely built units (CBUs) of commercial EVs from 25% to 40%
Semi knocked-down (SKD) forms of passenger EVs from 15% to 30%
SKD forms of electric buses, trucks and 2Ws from 15% to 25%
CKD forms of passenger EVs, 3Ws, 2Ws, bus and trucks from 10% to 15%
Other news