Telangana raring to go on e-mobility solutions; State hosting e-Mobility Week from Feb. 5

As electric mobility is becoming the buzzword across the globe, Hyderabad is evolving into an EV-hub in India. Telangana boasts of a Telangana Mobility Valley which provides a fillip to the e-mobility ecosystem. To fortify this further and to showcase Telangana as an ideal destination for investments in the e-mobility sector, the city will be hosting the country’s first-ever Formula-E race on February 11 and 12.

Telangana is one of the first states in the country to launch an Electric Vehicle and Energy Storage Policy in 2020 with an aim to promote research and development in this sector.

Telangana is already home to companies such as Fisker, Olectra, Biliti Electric, ZF, Hyundai and Bosch that are either manufacturing electric vehicles or have their research and development facilities in the state. Amara Raja group recently announced that it would set up a manufacturing unit for Li-ion batteries in Mahabubnagar.

The policy also offered incentives to customers of the electric vehicles. Some of them are 100 percent waiver in road tax for the first two lakh electric two-wheelers registered with Telangana, first 20,000 three -wheelers and first 5,000 four-wheeler passenger vehicles. The incentives were also extended to light commercial vehicles, tractors and buses.The government also decided to help 5,000 autorickshaws get fitted with replaceable batteries, converting them into electric vehicles.

As of December 2022, the state had a total of 46,937 electric vehicles. The state planned to set up 138 charging stations, of them 118 in Hyderabad, 10 each in Warangal and Karimnagar. There are 20 charging stations currently set up in Hyderabad.

Electric Vehicles, however, have their own set of challenges, given the market is laden with cheap two-wheelers that are imported by parts and assembled in India. Some of these two wheelers go up in flames which is a cause of concern to consumers and the government.

Another challenge is that charging is a concern as it is time consuming and not many electric vehicles can change batteries when they are out of charge and will have to wait for the vehicle to charge.

In fact, Principal Secretary of Industries Jayesh Ranjan, participating in a panel discussion on a national TV channel, said that the industry was still in a nascent stage and it was evolving. He said that like filling of fuel at a dispenser, EVs should have the facility to just replace the battery and move on. Energy storage was the biggest challenge confronting the EV industry, he observed. However; a lot of research was going on into developing energy storage and also easily replaceable batteries.

The government hopes that the Telangana e-Mobility week that includes rallies, panel discussions, auto-expos and seminars from experts in the field will help the state bring in more investments and also find answers to some of the challenges this sector faces. The event starts on February 5 with a Rall-E and will conclude with the Formula-E race on February 11 and 12 at the Necklace road circuit in front of the Telangana Secretariat, which is converted to a street racing track.