Why future of cars does not look electrified

The Economist magazine, which calls itself a newspaper, is a venerable old institution.

- SUVEEN SINHA

Successful people are said to read it. The notso-successful ones, such as your columnist, read it only occasionally.

One such random reading threw up a headline from the economist.com website that struck a chord.

"The future lies with electric vehicles," said a special report dated April 14, 2023.

Some people in India do not like the kind of coverage The Economist does of this country's economy and politics, especially when the two economy and politics are spoken of in the same breath. But this soothsaying about automobiles would have warmed many hearts in India.

Making a jump from internal combustion engines (ICE) to electric vehicles is the kind of romantic prospect that would appeal to a country that jumped from a shortage of landline phones to an abundance of smartphones. It could be described by using the "four-letter word... starts with s" that Rahul Dravid famously hesitated to use while describing India's bowling attack last year. A while ago, there was also a buzz that India would ban registration of ICE cars in a few years, probably by the end of this decade.

Electric two-wheelers appear to be on the road to living up to that word. They had their highest registration figure in March more than 138,000 compared to the previous monthly high of 103,000 in May 2023. March registrations were nearly double of February. It was also the month when e2Ws accounted for 9 per cent of all two-wheelers. In scooters alone (e-motorcycles are few), electric penetration is said to have reached 28 per cent in March.