“Tomorrow’s transportation, today” sounds like an audacious claim coming from any cab company in India, let alone a start-up.
But here’s why Lithium Urban Technologies could be excused for using that as its tagline: India got its first electric vehicle in 2001, and 14 years later, Lithium gave the country its first electric cab service.
“I don’t think it was confidence. It was just gumption,” said Lithium Urban Technologies (P) Ltd Co-Founder Sanjay Krishnan, when asked what motivated him to start the service at a time when India lacked the infrastructure for it.
“When we started, there was none of that,” said the former operations chief of Comfort India, who started Lithium along with urban development expert and Nasa scientist Ashwin Mahesh.
The lack of enough charging stations and the impracticality of starting out with a large electric car fleet made them focus on catering to corporate clients rather than becoming the next Uber or Ola.
“Access and availability are key for B2C (business-to-consumer), which without a fairly large fleet size, you can’t provide. Then, you have got to put this infrastructure all across the city, right? So, who’s going to pay for it? How are you going to provision power for it? It’s like solving the world hunger problem,” Krishnan said.
Catering to corporate customers would solve many hurdles at once.
INDIA AND ELECTRIC VEHICLES
“Currently, there are a lot of perception issues in Indian customer minds towards electrical vehicles, especially cost and safety,” said Abdul Majeed, Partner and National Auto Practice Leader at PwC in India.
While the concept makes complete sense in many Indian cities struggling to deal with motor vehicle emissions, it is yet to take off in a big way in cities outside Bengaluru, which is “India’s Silicon Valley”, Majeed pointed out.
Alternative fuel vehicle (including electrical vehicle) sales volume globally is just 3% and is expected to go up to 12% by 2021, according to PwC.
“Lithium’s journey so far has not taken off in a big way because of many challenges such as cost, battery life, safety (possibility of battery explosions), infrastructure for battery charging and public perception,” Majeed said, underlining the need for better backing from the government too. “If these issues are addressed holistically, one could expect growth in future.”
While the Indian government wants to have 6 million electric and hybrid vehicles on the roads by 2020 under the National Electric Mobility Mission Plan 2020, electric vehicles have not had many takers in the country.
Source: Mint
