For most of the naughties, Bangalore-based entrepreneur Chetan Maini was the creator of the world’s top-selling electric car. Mr Maini sold about 4,000 units of the G-Wiz to buyers in multiple countries, despite withering reviews about its sluggish performance and toylike appearance, before selling his company to Indian group Mahindra & Mahindra in 2010 – the same year Nissan launched its Leaf model.
Nine years later, the entrepreneur has returned to a more crowded electric vehicle scene. But instead of targeting environmentally minded drivers in Europe, he is focused on the scooters, three wheelers and buses that account for the vast bulk of the passenger road transport in his home nation. “From experience elsewhere, you might think that cars are where the focus should be,” Mr Maini said at the Bangalore headquarters of SUN Mobility, the company he set up in 2017. “But India is very different from the West.” The Indian government agrees with this view, judging by a major policy announcement this month that dramatically ramped up its financial support for electric vehicles. Under the new scheme, New Delhi has allocated Rs1oobn ($1.5bn) for electric vehicle subsidies over the next three years – up from just Rs9bn given out since 2015.
And while countries in Europe and elsewhere have focused their EV subsidy efforts on car drivers, India has earmarked subsidies for 1m electric two-wheelers and 500,000 three-wheeled rickshaws, as well as 7,000 buses. The plan envisages subsidies for only 55,000 cars – and they must be taxis or other fleet vehicles, not private cars. The market is being pursued aggressively by local Uber rival Ola, which this month raised $58m for its new electric mobility unit from investors.