It decouples innovations between car and battery technology.
Car manufacturers will only innovate batteries to the extent that fits their pricing and performance models.
With the decoupling, the market for batteries will expand and different types of batteries for different performance / technologies will come into picture. But by making it legal to sell cars without batteries, it obliges car manufacturers to come up with data, certifications, technology transfer systems, etc to legally allow battery manufacturers to support their cars. This reduces a lot of paperwork and other red tape. For example, insurance. If you buy a car and change it's battery, your insurance provider may object for coverage or charge you extra for after market modifications.
So, while the user has to buy the battery, he will have more choice.
Also, new battery technology and new battery companies can grow with more ease.
There are some downsides to this approach. Many vehicle dynamics and safety tests are conducted for the vehicle as a whole. So it has to be seen how those issues are addressed. However, since the location of the battery, in a given vehicle is fixed, I think coming up with a framework of certifications or standardized parameters for battery physicals should be easy.
I think this law is primarily aimed at taxis and auto-rickshaws in many urban areas. Most of India's middle class still drives bikes and scooters. However, there are many taxis and autos. And these are usually very polluting. Shifting to an EV is usually more cost effective for the driver. The cost per kilometer of travel is lesser in EVs.
It will allow companies to compete above their scale if they don’t own huge battery operations, and probably force standard battery interfaces / easy customer install. That could make swapping batteries practical depending on the design.
This statement is ignorant at best. What looks like a sound business decision, one which opens up the market for more competition, you are twisting it as a politically motivated corrupt move.
By the logic you are stating, any business or market friendly move by any government will have to be targeted at specific individuals or families.
I really want to understand why there will not be any competition or open interface.
The car company decides the interface. If a rival chooses to create an open interface, and reap the benefits, market forces will ensure that all manufacturers do the same.
Moreover, the number of car manufacturers are limited, but the number of battery companies can expand a lot. Perhaps lead way to investments from overseas.
Imagine Tesla being able to open a battery factory in India, and just sell batteries, without worrying about cars and all.
You are either not Indian or you are ignoring everything to suit your narrative.
The current government has put on a lot of regulation to "protect home grown e-tailers" when Ambani was planning to launch an Amazon competitor.
Flipkart before they sold to Walmart had begged for years to give protection, but none was given, but when JioMart was to be launched, suddenly regulation was changed to benefit local e tailers, major benefactor was JioMart.
> Imagine Tesla being able to open a battery factory in India, and just sell batteries, without worrying about cars and all.
Hahahahahahahaha Due to stuoid red tape, Tesla took Gigafactory plans to China. 70% thungs were need to be locally sourced for starting Tesla factory in India and obviously we don't have the ecosystem.
> By the logic you are stating, any business or market friendly move by any government will have to be targeted at specific individuals or families.
Were you living under a rock when Telecom rules were being constantly flouted by Jio? All rules were specifically created to help Jio. The AGR case crippled telecos except Jio. Jio also has AGR but SC put the decision onto the govt for collecting or not. But others are forced to pay regardless if they go under.
> The car company decides the interface. If a rival chooses to create an open interface, and reap the benefits, market forces will ensure that all manufacturers do the same.
Hahahaha just like "anyone can start a startup in India. They can take Amazon AWS servers and domain from Godaddy and there won't be an issue.
Just like "anyone can apply for a business license and start a manufacturing plant"
You blisfully and maliciously ignore that the entire govt machinery has been working overtime to favour Ambani Adani.
> Moreover, the number of car manufacturers are limited, but the number of battery companies can expand a lot
Yeah and there can be many businesses which you can set up. Sure, all you ought to do is as for a license. Sure, govt won't twist rules to favour JioBattery and JioElectricCar
Protection for them has been around when the previous government was there too. FDI norms were eased only in the fag end of 2012.
Additionally, I agree with protecting home grown e-tailers. Now, perhaps the rules favor Ambani, but breaking up large conglomerates is a different problem.
From the perspective of enacting sound laws and regulation, restricting outside e-tailers and promoting home grown ones is always good, atleast until India is a lot more developed.
> Due to stuoid red tape, Tesla took Gigafactory plans to China.
And thereby ending up supporting an authoritarian regime that mocks human rights, and is actively participating in genocide.
Tesla went to China for cheap labor. Do you think ill-treatment of workers in Chinese factories will be reported by "Independent media" in China?
>anyone can start a startup in India. They can take Amazon AWS servers and domain from Godaddy and there won't be an issue
I don't get it. Yes, anyone can actually make a startup in India, they can hire AWS servers, get domains from GoDaddy and there wont be an issue. I know because I did the same.
>anyone can apply for a business license and start a manufacturing plant
Technically true, but it's still difficult. Even in countries like US, you have to grease a few hands to get things done. Sure, it may be the hands of a Senator, but still you have to do it. I would say the exception is Silicon Valley, but examples like those are few and far between. Even SV spends a lot for lobbying.
>You blisfully and maliciously ignore that the entire govt machinery has been working overtime to favour Ambani Adani.
Far fetched.
>Yeah and there can be many businesses which you can set up. Sure, all you ought to do is as for a license. Sure, govt won't twist rules to favour JioBattery and JioElectricCar
Can you run a business in your country without a license from the govt?
Govt. may twist rules, but the rules currently placed are not twisted. I never said they cannot be twisted in the future.
> Can you run a business in your country without a license from the govt?
As far as I know, businesses don’t require general licences to operate in the United Kingdom.
Licences for certain activities that have an environmental impact may be necessary (significant use of water, potential pollution of air / ground / water, dangerous material handling).
> Considering that the ruling party is BJP (equivalent to US Republicans)
There are many things wrong with the BJP, but they are not really equivalent to the Republican Party. This is a lazy comparison at best, disingenuous at worst. Their economic, environmental policies and even social issues are completely different than the Republicans.
Yeah. The Modi government/BJP is equivalent to right wing authoritarian governments around the world. Tories in the UK, Netanyahu’s government in Israel, etc.
The Republican Party is on its own little island far far away from any other normal political party in the world. For example, the Republican Party is the only major democratic political party in the entire world that denies the existence of anthropogenic climate change. There are major right wing political parties worldwide that may claim the costs of doing anything exceeds the benefits or that we need to wait for better solutions, etc but no major party denies the basic scientific fact of it happening the way the Republicans do.
There is also other stuff like the prevalence of young earth creationism, the overt religiosity, the lack of any economic principles (e.g. just see their rhetoric on deficits when there is a Democrat in charge vs what they do when they are in charge) etc that sets them apart from major right wing political parties worldwide.
Your statement is lazy comparison, disingenuous at worst.
Economic policies? Oh, do you mean the disasterous butchering of Indian Economy which took it to a 8yr low? Or do you mean the 45yr high unemployment level? Or the pathetic rollout of GST when they kept changing rules everyday or the disasterous demonization which screwed up entire informal sector?
Environmental policy?
Is this the same policy wherein the BJP is about to remove all protections provided to Environment by law? It would made it very easy for companies to take out a forest?
Or are you referring to the million trees cut down under the pretense of "development"
Or do you refer to the butchering of part of Arey forest for a metro car shade in Mumbai?
Social issues you say?
So you mean the blatant attempt of destroying Secular fabric of this nation by bringing CAA NRC?
Or do you refer to the police state wherein they arrest everyone who dares oppose them on sedition? Or the arrest-but-no chargesheet-file? Or the malicious rearrests after courts have let the dissenters go?
You are just listing newspaper headline items, I'm not sure how they are relevant when comparing BJP with the Republican Party. Let's actually talk about the policies and contrast. Some of the government schemes announced (and in progress) would make Modi right at home in a Bernie Sanders town hall meeting rather than being similar to the Republicans. Just off the top of my head:
* Modi doubled down on Congress' NREGA scheme for providing guaranteed 100 days of pay to rural workers, whether they worked or not.
* Introduced direct cash transfers to farmers.
* Various farm loan waivers, especially some of the BJP-led state governments.
* Announced a free healthcare under National Health Protection scheme.
* Free housing, electricity and LPG gas connections for the poor.
* Introduced long term capital gains tax in 2019.
* Non-opposition to LGBT rights. I say "non-opposition" because they don't champion it like the Democrats, but are neutral since it's not a big ticket item in Indian society or politics. They passed a bill to prohibit discrimination against transgender persons last year (but there is some controversy surrounding it [1]). Again, a big no-no for the Republican Party.
* Massive push for renewable energy - India doubled its renewable energy capacity in 3 years and on track to triple it in the following 4 years [2]. 47 GW (45% of all under development) coal projects was cancelled just in 2019 [3]. Good luck trying to get the climate change denying Republicans to do this.
BJP's economic polices are as socialist as they come [4]. None of this would fly with the Republicans. That's how they are different - in actual policy positions.
I agree with the idea that Republicans are extremely different than right wing parties worldwide.
However, they are no less socialist than anyone else. The only difference is Republican socialism flows upwards.
I mean, what could be more socialist than demanding a foreign company he sold and deciding which limited sets of companies is allowed to buy it. And we don’t even need to get into the outright bribery where they are demanding a cut of the transaction.
That behavior, even without the open corruption, is beyond what most major center left parties in the world are proposing now that Corbyn does not lead UK’s Labour.
True that. I thought you were yet another BJP troll let loose on me.
Yes, BJP is primarily acting like a socialist party.
Also I didn't say equal to Republican, I said equivalent as in both parties are conservative and they both work exclusively for their billionaire donors while pretending to care for common people.
Will force battery producers closer to customer. reduce gate keepers and strengthen supply chains. and yes reduces the cost and hence companies can offer batteries for rent
It makes the comparison with an ICE vehicle much more direct. Instead of "cheap car plus expensive fuel" vs. "expensive car plus cheap electricity", it's "car plus fuel" vs. "car plus battery rental".
Also, just thinking about it now, it helps mitigate risk due to fluctuating demand because the cost to own and operate the vehicle scales down more at light usage.
So there is a benefit in converting fixed upfront capital costs into rolling operational costs.
In most developed countries consumers can convert those upfront costs easily and cheaply through loans. In a country like India, loans are much more expensive.
Think of it like using cloud services instead of buying an upfront machine.
Loans for cars are between 5.1% and 7.7% here in the Netherlands.[0] Loans for cars tend to be the cheapest loans after mortgage loans. So 6.9% (Number for 2020) doesn’t appear crazy high to me.
I see it as helping adoption by alleviating battery replacement anxiety.
If the vehicle doesn't even come with a battery and you're able to acquire a standard battery from any number of competing vendors, you're a whole lot less afraid of buying an EV and not being able to replace its battery in five years because it's been obsoleted by the OEM.
In India, the most common vehicles are not cars, but mopeds/scooters. Unlike cars it is perfectly feasible to have battery swapping as your main/only form of refueling, and have the customers subscribe to your battery swap infrastructure instead of buying the battery. Its far more convenient for customers since you never need to wait to charge your vehicle, and you don't need to worry about having charging stations near your work or at home. This is precisely what gogoro, the most popular e-scooter company in Taiwan does.
Maybe it makes it easier to buy and have cars shipped from outside the country, since batteries are hazardous materials? Or maybe locally-made batteries are cheaper?
The opposite might be the case as well, maybe the cars are easy to manufacture locally but they import the batteries from China or wherever?
Or maybe just decoupling the batteries from the car enables more consumer choice. I wish the article had some hint about the actual motivation for this policy, but I could imagine several scenarios where it could be beneficial.
Not sure how Govt duty works in India but if it is anything like in Australia removing the battery would make the vehicle cheaper and thus reduce the amount of duty paid.
Companies that raise prices by doing that will be beaten by companies that don't very quickly. Alternatively, combined with the much weaker law enforcement, "illegal" (I'm not sure about the legality of cracking copy protections here) copies will flourish if it's close to being feasible, which it could be.
Car manufacturers will only innovate batteries to the extent that fits their pricing and performance models.
With the decoupling, the market for batteries will expand and different types of batteries for different performance / technologies will come into picture. But by making it legal to sell cars without batteries, it obliges car manufacturers to come up with data, certifications, technology transfer systems, etc to legally allow battery manufacturers to support their cars. This reduces a lot of paperwork and other red tape. For example, insurance. If you buy a car and change it's battery, your insurance provider may object for coverage or charge you extra for after market modifications.
So, while the user has to buy the battery, he will have more choice.
Also, new battery technology and new battery companies can grow with more ease.
There are some downsides to this approach. Many vehicle dynamics and safety tests are conducted for the vehicle as a whole. So it has to be seen how those issues are addressed. However, since the location of the battery, in a given vehicle is fixed, I think coming up with a framework of certifications or standardized parameters for battery physicals should be easy.
I think this law is primarily aimed at taxis and auto-rickshaws in many urban areas. Most of India's middle class still drives bikes and scooters. However, there are many taxis and autos. And these are usually very polluting. Shifting to an EV is usually more cost effective for the driver. The cost per kilometer of travel is lesser in EVs.