PETROL vs ELECTRIC CARS

There are about 30,000 components in an average petrol car including the tiny hose connector, bolts and nuts of different sizes and upto the large engine block. A petrol/diesel car has ove 200 components in the combustion engine whereas an electric car has only 20 components. When we make a simple assessment, this 90 per cent reduction in parts may bring considerable reduction in the sale price. But it is not so. We may find here the Tata Tiago (petrol) ex show room price in Kochi, that is Rs 5,59,900. Tiago Ev, Rs 8,69,000, 19.2 KWh. We may find here a hike in  price for about 55 per cent from petrol car to ev car. The reason for this price increase is said to be for the following. One is the high price of battery and the other is lack of manufacturing facilities. If a new battery is fitted in a Tiago it cost between Rs 4.1 to 5.1 lakh.

Lithium reserves in our country was comparatively low could be one reason for the high price of Ev in our country. However, recently a fairly large reserve of Lithium has been found in Rajasthan. It is also reported that huge reserves of Lithium has also been found in Jammu and Kashmir, Karnataka and Jharkhand. Now it is the government to take those into utilisation as early as possible. Depending upon the availability we may manufacture Ev batteries in large numbers and parallelly bring down the prices of Electric Vehicles considerably so that the import of petroleum products can be brought down drastically. Government may have a huge BOT on this account too. The price of Ev car should be about 15% less than the petrol car, so that both the people as well as the government shall be immensely benefitted. This is high time that we can think about exporting Electric Vehicles to a many number of countries.

K V George