Despite all the hype around electric mobility and the government going out of the way to promote pollution free cars, the situation on the ground is practically lackluster. The sales figures for electric cars show that just 1,309 cars got sold in the 8-month period April 2019 to November 2019, as per an Economic Times report.
This is less than 1% of all the passenger vehicles sold in the market, which stood at 18,82, 047, for the same 8-month period.
For the record, you don’t have that many options in the market if you were to plan to buy one of these cars that run on battery power instead of the fossil fuels, petrol or diesel. These are Tata Tigor EV, the Hyundai Kona EV and the Mahindra e-Verito. Mahindra has one more vehicle in its lineup, the e2o but that model is being phased out.
The total of 1,309 is accounted for by the Mahindra e-Verito-513; Tata Tigor EV -491; Hyundai Kona EV 280 and Mahindra e2o 25. None of them could manage to sell 100 vehicles on an average per month. Even Mahindra and Tata Tigor have been able to reach these numbers thanks to the category of customers the have who are fleet operators. If you go by the number of individual car buyers investing in electric cars, there havent been many takers.
The general sense among the observers and experts has been that the lack of charging infrastructure is the major limiting factor in the electric cars becoming popular among the individual car buyers. The higher cost of the vehicles could also be another reason for the reluctance among the customers.
The government will have to take the initiative if it is serious about promoting the sale of electric cars. It may insist on its senior officers buying electric cars and setup charging infrastructure within the government office premises to start with. This will become a good advertisement for the rest of the population to follow.