Abstract
India is importing a large percentage of petroleum products, and therefore in the interest of national energy security, it is essential for India to reduce the use of petrol and diesel-based vehicles and increase electrical vehicles on roads. Also, due to high levels of pollution in most of the Indian cities due to tail-pipe emissions from petrol and diesel vehicles, switching to electric mobility must be taken with increased efforts by government and manufacturers. Supported by the policies of government, there are great initiatives by many public sector and private organizations to gradually increase the number of charging stations for electric vehicles in cities and highways all over India. With availability of improved batteries, controllers and motors at lower costs in the coming 4-5 years, it is expected that the costs of all categories of EVs would come down to be competitive with the petrol and diesel-based vehicles. With ambitious plans of Indian Government to have power generation from renewable energy in the coming 10 years, the power demand for charging of electric vehicles can easily be met only from the newly-added renewable energy sources. Therefore, as discussed in this review paper, there are many positive indicators to support the electric mobility in India and certainly, there will be considerable increase in the number of electric vehicles on Indian roads in the next five years.
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