Frankly speaking, for a nation like India, I think we should first move towards purely hybrid vehicles and then towards purely electric.
We should concentrate or focus on smaller cars having hybrid varients. I would prefer to see smaller engines which use petrol and produce power at its most economical conditions, and that power stored in smaller batteries that would drive the electric engine. So we save in the engines a bit and losses a bit on the battery. I would consider say, 50-100 km of travel on battery alone.
With govt subsidies in the form of reduced or no road tax and other taxes, they could possibly built it hopefully within say 50k-100k over the normal engined cars.
From what I know, smaller engine and operating it at its most efficient conditions at all times means we get super mileage. Plus running these hybrids on pure electric power in cities/ slow speeds/ heavy traffic means again savings in fuel. If the manufacturers can really show how much a person could save with this, normal people would surely go for this. Average drivers who doesn't care for the fun factor (which could be said about most drivers) would go for hybrid cars then.
Once we have enough hybrids to justify building charging points, we could start building them.
Currently a lot of drivers use their cars for intercity travels or city to hometown travels regularly. Purely electric vehicles would find it very difficult to recharge cars in their travel. If charge is gone and they are stuck somewhere, unlike petrol cars which can be started again with petrol bought in a can from any nearby station, purely electric cars are useless.
Once we have good enough charging infrastructure, with the improvement in battery technologies during that time, we could slowly transfer to pure electric vehicles.
I feel hybrid is better technology right now in India.
What do you guys think?
That's my take on this subject.
![[confused]](https://www.theautomotiveindia.com/forums/images/smilies/Confused.gif "Confused [confused]")
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