NITI Aayog highlighted the need to make India a manufacturing hub during the ICRIER seminar on Electric Vehicle

Sudhendu J. Sinha, Adviser (Infrastructure Connectivity – Transport and Electric Mobility), NITI Aayog highlighted the need to make India a manufacturing hub. He was delivering the keynote address during the ICRIER seminar on Electric Vehicle. He tabled a report titled ‘Understanding Investment, Trade and Battery Waste Management Linkages for a Globally Competitive Electric Vehicles Manufacturing Sector’.

Releasing the report he said, “We need more awareness, the affordability issue also needs to be taken care for manufacturers and users. We also need to assess what kind of action needs to be taken to make India a manufacturing hub. When we use the word competitiveness, we not only imply the cost but also mean quality. Until we go for world-class quality, it would be make in India, use in India and throw in India approach. We have to go for the best parameters to make Indian two-wheelers and three-wheelers the objects of desire. This would need a lot of upscaling and innovation.”

The report is a collaborative production between ICRIER and International Institute of Sustainable Development (IISD). The report comprehends the current EV landscape and fills in the crucial gap of information to support the process of making informed decisions for efficient policymaking in the EV sector.

As per the report, Germany, Japan, USA, and China were the top four exporters of EVGs in 2010 and in 2018-19, accounting for over 40 per cent of global exports in EVGs. India, in particular, does not figure among the top 20 exporters or importers of EV goods in the world, which points to ample scope for improvement along both dimensions, especially in a world integrated in regional and global value chains. 

Further, some of the key takeaways from the in-depth stakeholder consultation undertaken are that policies have been successful in incentivising consumer demand for electric 2W and 3W, with electric 4W and buses also picking up, supply challenges can derail the rapid up scaling of EV and battery investment, highlighting the need for stronger policy support, and complementarity between state and national policies is crucial, with some states ahead of others.

While discussing sustainable EV battery supply chains, the study found three major key takeaways. Firstly, transportation cost forms a crucial part of the recycling cost of batteries. It is necessary to understand the waste flow dynamics and optimise transportation cost. Second, there is an acute shortage of skilled labour in the waste recycling industry. Most stakeholders indicated that finding skilled labour is difficult and that they often have to settle for inadequately skilled workers. Third, incentives could play a critical role in the success of market-based policies in the sector. More than 60% of the stakeholders wanted better incentives for recycling battery waste. 

Deepak Mishra, Director and CE, ICRIER, highlighted that “the Indian EV ecosystem will have to be globally competitive in all its dimensions, from production to effective management of battery waste”.

Speaking on the occasion, Siddarthan Balasubramanian, Principal Strategist, ClimateWorks Foundation, said “Accelerating EV transport mobility and linking it to a circular economy will reduce the import fuel dependency, turn challenges into opportunities and provide safe livelihood options for most vulnerable societies.

The seminar jointly organised by the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER), Climate Works Foundation, IISD, and Shakti Sustainable Energy Foundation discussed how producing a globally competitive electric vehicle manufacturing sector is India’s way to tackle the climate change crisis. An important step toward fighting such a critical problem is by decreasing emissions in one of the largest emitting sectors namely transportation. There was a consensus in the seminar that the introduction of Electric Vehicles (EVs) is a boon for transportation. The distinguished speakers put forward their views about various challenges in trade, investment, and battery waste management of EVs in India and proposed diverse solutions to aid India’s EV transition.