Hyper ‘EV’olution

It is 10pm on a Sunday night and we are about to retire after a long, social day. Suddenly, my daughter knocks on the door to say the ink cartridge in her printer has run out. She has to submit a school project the next morning and needs some print outs urgently.

We log on to a hyper delivery app and within 12 minutes the required print outs are dropped off at our home. My daughter goes to sleep peacefully, well prepared for school presentation in the morning. Welcome to the ecosystem of hyper deliveries.

Be it packaged food, clothes, medicine, electronics, stationeries, cosmetics or just about any consumer product that you can think of. There are half-a-dozen apps serving Mumbai which deliver all of these things on your doorstep within ten minutes.

CRISS-CROSSING CITIES

I recently wanted to buy high-quality earphones for my morning runs. They cost about US$ 400 a pair and I was surprised that a hyper delivery app could deliver them so quickly. Especially as we are in a super-crowded city with an average traffic speed of 20 km per hour.

If you are wondering how these hyper delivery agents can get to you in ten minutes, then you need to check out their new electric bikes and scooters, which pack a bazooka. They zip-zap across our major cities and their congested traffic lanes putting proposed hyperloop high-speed transportation systems and other ‘supersonic’ carriers to shame.

GIGA LITHIUM CELL FACTORY

Whether it’s electric two-wheelers or cars or buses, the EV revolution is hard to miss. Allocated distinctive green licence plates under the national registration system, these vehicles stand out from the rest. Each month, India sells around 35 000 electric two-wheelers. The biggest manufacturer – the biggest in the world, in fact – is building a giga factory to produce its own lithium-ion battery cells.

India’s cumulative sales of electric vehicles exceeded 4.1 million by March 2024. About 1.7 million had been sold in the preceding 12 months, which is an 80% increase year-on-year.

GOVERNMENT SUPPORT

The Government is aggressively pushing further penetration of electric vehicles (EVs) through policy, fiscal and infrastructure support. Incentives such as waiving registration fees and lower goods and services tax rates or schemes such as the Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Electric (and hybrid) vehicles, and the Production Linked Incentive have acted as catalyst for the faster adoption of EVs.

Ministers want an overall penetration of 30% by 2030 and officials are working overtime to secure the required infrastructure support, specially related to charging. Call it evolution or revolution, Indian manufacturers and consumers are hyper-charged for now.

I forgot to mention that we had a party at my place the weekend before but we ran out of ice at 2am. Ten minutes later, we were chilling out again. Thanks to a hyper delivery by an electric two-wheeler. Cool!