INTERACT ION HERO ELECTRIC

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HERO ELECTRIC | E-MOBILITY CHALLENGING, BUT PROMISING

The recently announcement of the National Elec-

tric Mobility Mission Plan 2020 (NEMMP) by the

Indian government envisages the adoption of six

to seven million EV and hybrid vehicles by 2020.

And a large chunk of this will come from electric

two-wheelers, which have already ridden down

from a wave of success. In a recent interaction,

Sohinder Gill, CEO, Global Business, Hero Elec-

tric offered his perspectives on the future of these

vehicles and the industry.

The present scenario for electric two-wheelers

isn’t very bright in India, if seen without NEMMP’s

push. The Indian buyer is still looking for some

kind of a magical solution from electric two-

wheelers. Gill said these expectations are a result

of campaigns led by various independent distrib-

utors, especially the fly-by-night operators, who

were selling unbranded Chinese products. The

false promises eventually led to high sales of

electric two-wheelers. Eventually though, as con-

sumers experienced the first battery replacement

cost and the overall charging cost, the promises

started falling apart. Negative sentiments in the

market took over, and the promising new idea

started losing its sheen.

For companies such as Hero Electric, this

turned out to be the biggest challenge for about

18 months – getting people back to believe in

electric two-wheelers. Many customers still view

these products with suspicion. Changing this

mindset and scenario is where the NEMMP comes

into play, Gill opined.

ENCOURAGING INITIATIVE

Gill believes the NEMMP would help the industry in

three ways. First, as the government is making an

announcement, people will look at it more seriously

and the trust factor will improve. Second, the

upfront cost for consumers will reduce significantly,

which is more important for most market consum-

ers rather than total cost of ownership. Third, the

consumers will look at the extra value they’re re-

ceiving for a lower cost, owing to subsidies.

Gill, who is also Director – Corporate Affairs at

the Society of Manufacturers of Electric Vehicles,

India (SMEV), believes NEMMP would not result in

immediate rise in EV sales. “It might take about

six to nine months to achieve a countrywide pene-

tration, following which we might see some visible

sales,” he said.

Another key aspect of the NEMMP is that it

discourages the traders and short-window opera-

tors from affecting the market. The requirement to

invest in R&D and achieve a certain rate of locali-

sation will eventually make the system sustaina-

ble only for serious players. This is extremely im-

portant since the target number for the govern-

ment is made up mostly by two-wheelers and this

is the area, which is easier to penetrate on a

mass scale. The launch of these vehicles will then

be followed by technologies such plug-in hybrids,

electric three-wheelers and buses etc, which are

still under development.

Gill said that the government policy is a lot

better thought this time, as instead of providing a

flat subsidy to vehicles of a particular kind, the

focus is on providing efficiency-linked subsidies.

This will ensure that vehicles with higher efficiency

attract more subsidies and are easily adopted by

people. Another advantage of this move will be that

manufacturers will be encouraged to develop more

efficient technologies in order to achieve sustaina-

bility. This way the government too will get better

return on its investment in the form of lesser pollu-

tion and lower expenditure on buying crude oil.

But what happens when subsidies get

removed? Will EVs continue to be an attractive

proposition for consumers? The new NEMMP looks

at this aspect, but the industry still has a lot of

thoughts to be generated in this area. “The industry

and government also need to look at whether the

vehicles being sold under the plan are taking away

any share from petrol vehicles or are just catering

to new customer creation. The plan will be com-

pletely successful only if we’re able to reduce oil

consumption and the related pollution. If imple-

mented and monitored well, the plan’s cost could

turn out to be a fraction of what the country will

save in the form of foreign exchange and the subsi-

dies they’re presently offering,” he said.

NON-EXISTENT INFRASTRUCTURE

Talking of the challenges and areas of improve-

ment, Gill said that battery and related electronics’

manufacturing in India is almost non-existent. For

example, no one in India makes electric motors for

electric vehicles and hence companies have to

depend on imports. The industry and government

need to collectively understand that to get about

seven million vehicles on road, a huge change is

required in R&D. Areas such as lightweighting

through better implementation of material science

will play an important role in encouraging electric

mobility. With range anxiety being a major deter-

rent, it’s imperative that companies develop lighter

vehicles in order to offer enhanced range.

From an Indian perspective, companies need

not reinvent the wheel. Gill believes there’s poten-

tial for Indian companies to develop products

ground-up, especially where they need to depend

on international markets for specific materials. In

other cases, there has to be a focus on customis-

ing technology for Indian requirements. “Control-

lers, for example, are available easily in many

countries but aren’t customised to suit Indian

driving cycles. The chip in that controller doesn’t

support functions such as overload control, vibra-

tions, rough usage, etc, which are quite common

in India. Such components hence need to be de-

veloped with inputs that enable the above men-

tioned functionalities,” he said.

Hero Electric has made a significant progress

in the area of lead-based batteries. Starting from

a process of buying batteries from China, the

company has been able to develop batteries in a

way that they’ve become more reliable. This

process took the company about three years as

every new battery needs a checking cycle of about

six to eight months. In India, companies need to

focus even more on the batteries as the climate

conditions are extreme in nature. Most batteries

here fail in the period starting from April to July as

the temperature inside the battery box can exceed

55° C. In such cases, energy density packaging

and battery management systems need to be

looked into in detail.

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autotechreview 7Apri l 2013 Volume 2 | Issue 4

Another critical issue in India is charging.

Voltage fluctuations and frequent power outages

have negative impact on the battery life. In order

to reduce this, Hero Electric has developed a new

charger from which details about charging can be

retrieved whenever required. These details are

then used to educate the customer about tech-

niques that can help them prolong battery life.

Such region-based innovation is critical for the

success of electric mobility in India.

Electric motor is another area which needs to

be focussed on in the coming years, said Gill.

More companies including Hero Electric are advo-

cating raising the bar for low-speed categorisa-

tion from 25 km/h to 35 km/h. This is despite the

problem of a higher inverse relationship between

speed and efficiency in two-wheelers. The target

is in the range of 35 km/h to 50 km/h of top speed

with high efficiency. Achieving this would signifi-

cantly increase the practicality of the vehicles for

most kinds of city usage and attract greater inter-

est from consumers.

FUTURE PLANS

Talking of future products, Gill said that their

focus isn’t limited to just two-wheelers, and the

company is looking at special application vehicles

too. Helping them develop a variety of products is

the fact that they’ve worked extensively on battery

technology in the past few years. Gill believes the

company’s present capability is good enough to

offer the best possible solutions and make the

most from the push by NEMMP. An interesting part

about the battery development is the fact that

Hero Electric tried working with an Indian partner

at first but things didn’t work well. The lack of

suppliers with the right technology or the willing-

ness to try out new paths forced the company to

look at a Chinese supplier. In the next two years,

the company worked on various parameters to

arrive at the stable stage it is at today.

Talking about lithium-ion as an option, Gill

said lead is the favoured material presently for

two-wheelers. The main reasons for this include

the unfavourable reaction of lithium to heat, life

cycle reliability and cost. He expects lead to be the

favoured choice till the point it’s deemed to be too

heavy to derive optimum efficiency from a vehicle.

However, the company is simultaneously working

on products with lithium but isn’t being able to

get the desired life from the battery presently.

In order to encourage adoption of lithium-ion

powered vehicles, the government and banks too

need to come together to finance at least the

battery cost over a period of few years. This will

speed up adoption and the volumes in turn will

speed development. By then, one can expect to

see better and stable lithium batteries, but even

then lead might account for about 70 % of the

market.

Gill believes that this time around there’s a

bright chance for electric mobility to take off for

two-wheelers. He expects that with things going

right we could see more than four million such ve-

hicles on the road by 2020, fulfilling a large chunk

of the NEMMP’s target. However, he said that the

path to this success isn’t easy and a lot of work

across the value chain of the industry needs to be

carried out. Focusing on not just technology devel-

opment but India-centric, flexible and cost-effec-

tive innovations are what will drive the growth of

electric mobility.

TEXT : Arpit Mahendra

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