India's electric vehicle movement is still alive and well, but not on four wheels

In countries like China and the United States, luxury car buyers are snapping up Teslas and other electric cars that cost more than $60,000 (about $400,000), and even relatively inexpensive models cost more than $25,000 (about $170,000).

But these cars are beyond the means of most households in India, where the median income is only $2,400 ($17,000). Despite this, the electric vehicle movement in India is alive and well, but not on four wheels, but on two and three wheels.

In India, electric mopeds and three-wheeled cabs zip along crowded city roads, and they cost as little as $1,000 (about $6,900). Such transportation is supported by environmentalists and the government. India's haze is unbearable. They see this as a way to eliminate some of that haze. At the same time, India's success in developing low-cost electric vehicles provides a template for developing countries: they too can abandon the internal combustion engine and combat climate change without expensive electric cars.

Kuldeep Singh, for example, drives a sky-blue Piaggio-branded electric three-wheeled cab. Twice a day, he goes to an exchange station near New Delhi to replace his drained lithium-ion batteries with fully charged ones.

"The best thing is that there is no pollution." Singh said. He paid about half the cost of filling up a conventional three-wheeler with a new battery, "and I'm proud of that, that India is going to be stronger."

Electric cars account for less than 5 percent

In the 12 months to March, Indian automakers sold 430,000 electric vehicles, more than three times as many as in the same period last year. Most of those were two- and three-wheelers, industry figures show, with just 18,000 electric vehicles, or 4 percent of the total. By comparison, Americans buy about 487,000 new electric vehicles in 2021, up 90 percent from 2020, according to Kelley Blue Book, an automotive research firm.

"The Modi government's 'Make in India' strategy has failed to succeed, exacerbating India's dependence on imports, especially from China," said R. Nagaraj, visiting professor at the Centre for Development Studies in the southern Indian state of Kerala. "The slogans have motivated the country well, but you can't just stop at that."