- While China, Europe and the US have become hubs for electric car purchases, India currently lags far behind.
- Change could be around the corner, however, with the IEA noting that sales of battery electric vehicles in India will reach nearly 50,000 by 2022, four times the previous year.
- During a recent interview with CNBC, Citroen brand CEO Stellantis agreed that the market in India is “just getting started”.
The NH48 highway in India. The country’s electric car sector is small compared to other major economies such as China and the US
Sw Photography | Digital vision | Getty Images
With a huge population, military and economy, India is seen by many as a country whose influence could grow significantly as the 21St century advances.
When it comes to electric cars, however, the country is playing catch-up.
That’s because while China, Europe and the United States have become hubs for buying electric cars (more than 50% of those on the road can now be found in China, according to the International Energy Agency), India currently lags far behind.
The turnaround could be around the corner, however, with the IEA’s Global EV Outlook for 2023 pointing to sales of battery electric vehicles in India reaching nearly 50,000 in 2022, four times the year-on-year above, but still small compared to the 4.4 million sold in China. .
Alongside the increase in sales, the IEA said India was also seeing a “surge” in both electrical and component manufacturing.
This had been supported by a $3.2 billion incentive program from the Indian government, which in turn had resulted in an investment of $8.3 billion.
With all of the above in mind, executives from some of the world’s largest automotive companies are making the case for setting up in India.
These include Citroen brand CEO Stellantis, who believes India’s electric vehicle sector, although in its early stages of development, could be “absolutely perfect” because of the way people use cars
During a recent interview with CNBC’s Charlotte Reed, Thierry Koskas agreed that the market in India was “just getting started.”
“But we have great hope for this market because a lot of car use in India is urban or suburban, and that can be absolutely perfect for electric vehicles,” he added.
Citroën India, which launched the all-electric ë-C3 in February 2023, is not alone in making a move in India’s nascent electric car sector.
Other companies doing the same include Volvo Cars, with its all-electric XC40 Recharge, and Audi, with its e-tron.
Speaking at Autocar India in 2021, the Audi India chief expressed confidence that the EV sector in the country will continue to grow.
“I think [the] the four-wheel industry is one [area]but you will also have a two-wheeler industry, even buses from the electric side coming, and three-wheelers as well,” said Balbir Singh Dhillon.
“So I think the whole ecosystem is going to develop at a much faster rate than we can imagine,” he added.
A full field
Companies like Audi, Volvo Cars and Stellantis are focusing on a market that is already home to some big players based in India.
These include Tata Motors, which counts Jaguar Land Rover among its subsidiaries. Tata was responsible for more than 85% of battery electric vehicle sales in India last year, according to the IEA.
Other Indian companies that are jockeying for position in the industry include Mahindra and Mahindra and Ola Electric.
In August 2022, the latter’s CEO Bhavish Aggarwal said his company would launch an all-electric vehicle that can go from zero to 100 kilometers per hour (just over 62 mph) in four seconds. At the time, the company said it planned to launch the car in 2024.
While there is a lot of talk about the potential of electric cars in India, a lot of work needs to be done to become a key part of its transport system.
“In India and all regions outside the top three EV markets, electric car sales are expected to account for 2-3% of car sales by 2023, a relatively small but growing share,” as noted by the IEA.
Citroën’s Koskas remains optimistic, however. “We launched the electric version of the C3, six months after launching the ICE [internal combustion engine] vehicle, no one else did,” he told CNBC.
Despite the speed at which a company like Citroen can move, the fact that fossil fuel-powered vehicles are still being launched shows how much the car industry will have to change if electric vehicles become dominant in India and worldwide.
It’s a huge task, but Koskas sounded optimistic about the way forward in India. “We are one of the few manufacturers that are present in this electric vehicle market today,” he said.
“It is today, marginal; we believe it will grow a lot in the future and we are very happy to be present as one of the first newcomers in this market.”
