Rani Srinivasan – Founder & CEO – Zero21- Renewable Energy Solutions
Stephan Lacock – Mechatronic Engineer, University of Stellenbosch
Vikrant Vaidya – Partner & Lead – EV Systems Engineering, pManifold
Yamini Keche – Energy Efficiency & Emerging Markets, pManifold
Retrofitting electric vehicles (EVs) presents a compelling opportunity to accelerate the transition towards sustainable transportation worldwide. Globally, as countries set ambitious targets for reducing carbon emissions, retrofitting offers a viable solution to upgrade existing internal combustion engine vehicles. It not only extends the lifespan of these vehicles but also significantly reduces their environmental impact. However, challenges persist, such as ensuring compatibility with diverse vehicle models, optimizing battery technology, and addressing regulatory standards.
Additionally, the cost-effectiveness of retrofitting compared to purchasing new EVs remains a critical consideration. In Africa, retrofitting holds immense promise, particularly in regions heavily reliant on older, polluting vehicles. The continent faces unique challenges, including limited access to charging infrastructure and a diverse vehicle fleet. Retrofitting offers an opportunity to bridge this gap by transforming conventional vehicles into cleaner, more efficient alternatives. By leveraging local expertise and resources, Africa can potentially lead in the adoption of retrofitting technologies, fostering economic growth and environmental sustainability. In India, with a burgeoning automotive market and a rapidly expanding EV sector, retrofitting assumes strategic importance. It provides a practical approach to make the existing fleet more eco-friendly, especially in a country with a substantial number of older vehicles.
Furthermore, retrofitting aligns with India’s emphasis on ‘Make in India’ initiatives, spurring innovation and employment opportunities in the EV ecosystem. However, ensuring safety standards, establishing reliable battery disposal mechanisms, and creating robust regulatory frameworks will be essential to unlock the full potential of EV retrofitting in the Indian context.
This webinar aims to discuss:
Business case for EV retrofitment to understand the associated advantages and opportunities (India & Africa).
Technical Challenges and mitigation measures in EV retrofitment to ensure reliability and safety (India & Africa).
Existing regulatory support to navigate the challenges and drive widespread adoption.
Rahul Bagdia – Chairman and MD, pManifold Barsha Paul – e-mobility and ZET Expert, pManifold Yuvraj Sarda – Head, e-Mobility solutions, Volvo Group Ashish Kulkarni– Mining Head, Dalmia Cements Limited Raghavendra Mysore – Co-founder, MOOEV technologies
Challenges in the mining-
Availability of the mineral (Minerals present at greater depths)
Operational costs
Fuel prices rising up
Operational challenges
Underground emissions affecting health’s of the works and productivity
The electrification of the off-highway sector in India is still in its early stages. Over the past few years, the focus has primarily been on electric two-wheelers, three-wheelers, some electric commercial vehicles, and a handful of electric cars. With the introduction of the Pradhan Mantri e-bus seva, our attention has now shifted significantly toward electric buses. However, when it comes to off-highway machinery, trucks, and construction equipment, the inherent challenges have led to them being less considered candidates for electrification in the Indian context.
As we delve into the realm of solutions and assess their economic viability, we are beginning to recognize certain gaps.
Hydrogen as a fuel has higher energy density and can power bigger class machinery but has quite high volume, and has challenges in terms of storage and transportation. The solution can revolve around using hybrids (smaller battery + Fuel Cells/ biodiesel).
The economies of scale is very important in this context, considering the uniqueness of each mining site, equipment, and the technology tailored to specific companies.With the diverse and site-specific nature of mining operations, a customized approach to equipment and technology becomes crucial.
Within the same industry and even across various types of mines, each operation presents unique challenges and requirements. The demands of a coal mine, for instance, can vary significantly from those of a cement mine, with distinctions arising from factors such as depth, gradients, and geological conditions. It’s important to recognize that the mining environment, with its diverse landscapes and conditions, ranks among the most challenging in terms of vehicle technology and capabilities.
Mining electrification is a great segment to look at purely from the both from the first resistance and looking at the system as a whole.
Currently, for cost effective solutions companies prefer using biodiesels as well as heat XL diesel where the cost of diesel is near about 10-15 rupees, instead of electrification. But this practice is not sustainable in the longer run and a concrete solution needs to be found.
Critical charging infrastructure, such as sub-stations, becomes important in areas near mining operations to ensure a consistent and reliable power supply for the machinery.
Given the essential role that these machines play in mining operations, uninterrupted access to power is very important to always maintain productivity and efficiency across all points within the mining site.
Temperatures in mining sites can reach up to 60 degree Celsius, in such cases, different battery technologies can be explored based on their run time and thermal capacity for safety considerations.
Collaboration and discussion between OEMs and Mine operators is necessary for OEMs to understand what products to develop.
Although the industrial niche is ripe for revolution, the journey towards electrifying mining equipment is rife with complexities, demanding a symphony of collaboration among technology developers, mining giants, and regulatory bodies.
The journey towards electrification in the industry relies heavily on collaboration, knowledge sharing, and investments. It’s not solely the responsibility of the government; early adopters and industry stakeholders must also be deeply committed and invested in advancing this sector.
A combination of clean energy technologies would be required to fully address energy related challenges facing the mining industry.
Governments have been obliged to transition to green transportation as a result of ongoing concerns about global warming and rising CO2 emissions, which has fuelled demand for electric vehicles (EVs). Since e-Bus are more efficient and cost less to operate than traditional buses, countries all over the world are testing out e-Bus adoption through pilot programs. Some of these countries have already scaled up their e-Bus operations.
Many African countries, including Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, Morocco, Nigeria, Tunisia, Uganda, Zimbabwe, and others are evaluating the technical feasibility and planning for the deployment of the e-Bus. From among them, Ghana’s stakeholders have taken the initiative to share the intracity and intercity e-bus market feasibility study carried out by pManifold and UNEP-CCC in collaboration with University of Ghana, outlining the challenges and possible mitigation measures in planning, procurement, commissioning and operations of e-buses.
Thus, in an effort to support early success and learning related to e-bus adoption in other developing countries, this webinar will include discussions centered on the following:
1. Tendering, contracting, procurement, and financing: How to address country-specific needs in tenders & contracts and how to make e-Bus adoption more bankable by modifying certain clauses, structures, and timelines, etc? 2. Depot and route selection and operations: How to better understand depot and route selection to minimize cost and improve operational performance? 3. Charging infrastructure planning and electricity supply: As the ecosystem adds EV loads to the grid, how can distribution companies, operators, equipment suppliers, and government actors work together to develop charging standards and plans for charging infrastructure and electric grid upgrades? 4. Products and supply chain: How can the planning process emphasize long-term fleet conversions and demand creation that OEMs require to make large-scale investments in manufacturing capacity? 5. Capacity building: How can training programs and resources support officials with their transition to a new technology and business models?
Globally, countries are attempting e-Bus adoption through pilots and some of the countries have already achieved scale in e-Bus operations. Today, the cost of an e-bus is three to four times higher than their ICE counterpart. Additionally, the local supply chain for e-buses is also missing in most parts of the globe.
To achieve higher adoption and increase affordability of e-Buses, the aggregated procurement can be a good mechanism. The aggregation can be driven through city, state and national transport authorities to bring ease and scale-up the demand. The demand aggregation would help achieving:
1. Economy of scale through mass production/assembly and procurement of buses and lower the e-Bus purchase price 2. Standardization in technical specification of e-Buses, chargers and subsystems 3. Demand aggregation among multiple users such as private and public fleet operators 4. Opening market for global and local tenders to help override the local supply constraint
Over the fast years, India undertook and benefitted from a similar centralized aggregation mechanism. For instance, under the UJALA scheme demand aggregation of LED bulbs brought down the per unit cost from INR. 310 to INR. 50. Similar attempt was recently done by CESL under ‘Grand Challenge’ and has become successful till the tendering stage where CESL is able to find competitive e-Bus prices at much lower rates as compared to ICE counterparts. The price of e-Bus operations has come down from 60 INR/km to 43 INR/km.
Although this is a success so far, it may face challenges in procurement, financing, actual deployment and operations. Hence, it is important to understand from experts the success factors of centralized aggregation and procurement.
This webinar will focus on different aspects of centralized aggregation and procurement mechanisms and how this mechanism can be a good example for other countries. The webinar will include discussions around the following questions:
• Price discovery success case-study of e-Buses centralized procurement in India • How cities’ needs are captured and translated into standardized technical specs for bulk/centralized bulk procurement to bring economic scale? • What role of right financing and model contracting to mitigate risk for different stakeholders involved (OEM, City bus operator and others)? • How to ensure quality deployment and performance through this mechanism? • What are the learnings for other developing countries?
The electric vehicles (EV) market is growing rapidly all over the world. In India, the EV market has gained significant momentum at the present time. Approximately 2% of total 2-wheeler sales 2021-22 were electric. A whopping 46% of 3-wheeler sold were also electric. As of today, the number of e-2-wheeler and e-3-wheeler on-road are around 4.2 lakh and 7.1 lakh respectively. The FAME-II policy is encouraging start-ups and investors to build the EV ecosystem in India while competing with the cheaper imported options. Currently, there are 380 EV startups and auto OEMs operating in India.
The natural air-cooled batteries are most common among e-2-wheelers today. Most safety-related incidents have also been observed in electric two-wheelers over the past year or so. This has triggered many recalls by auto OEMs and the overall credibility of EV safety in India has suffered a dent making it a critical issue.
Thus, the following safety aspect for e-2-wheelers in particular, and EVs in general need to be incorporated in the interest of both – the users and the EV industry.
1) Design of EVs (battery chemistry selection, sizing, cooling system, regeneration, controller calibration of safe operating thresholds, etc.)
2) Operations of EVs (awareness of best practices for a safe operation like charging rate, cooling period, ambient temperature, etc.)
3) Adequate EV regulatory framework (certification tests to capture real-world use cases and thus prevent on-road incidents)
It is important to deeply analyze all possible technical reasons and understand potential areas of improvement to avoid such incidents in near future. Thus, this webinar will focus on understanding;
The global market for truck-based freight transportis estimated to grow by greater than 4% from current 4.2 Trillion USD to 5.5 Trillion USD by 2030. It is expected there will be 4 million trucks by 2030. Trucks account for 18% world’s freight transportation and 40% CO2 emissions of road transport. Due to almost complete dependency on fossil fuels, this sector provides huge opportunity of de-carbonisation through electrification.
e-Trucks are catching up in medium to large size fleets globally with both the OEMs and fleet operators driving the market. It is estimated that 15% of global truck sales by 2030 will be e-Trucks. The fast-growing e-commerce industry will add to the demand for long hauls as well as LCVs for intra-city distributions.
In long haul applications, the per day running of trucks is higher than current available range capabilities of e-Trucks. This will require en-route fast charging options to be set across their geographical coverage. Both the high range battery packs and fast charging infrastructure adds up to the capital requirement. Inspite of lower operating costs, there are concerns on supply availability and operational feasibility, which has limited its growth.
This Webinar will discuss scope of electrification of trucks, technical aspects, feasibility, manufacturer and user perspective and bring experts from multiple domains – e-Truck Manufacturer, Logistics Provider and Charging Specialist to discuss following:
What is role of e-Trucks in decarbonization of freight transportation?
What are e-Truck segmentations based on applications like long haul vs. intracity, and other use cases?
What are the techno-commercial considerations (kerb mass, payload, range, speed, gradeability, charging, TCO etc.) for viability of e-Trucks in different applications?
What different charging infrastructure requirements and techno-commercial considerations for different e-Truck applications?
Most ship/boat fleets today emit high toxic gases and particulates equivalent to multi-million cars. Due to the need to reduce local pollution of NOx, SOx and particulate matter, many vessel operators have mainly turned to low-sulphur fuels such as methanol and LNG, as well as invested in scrubbers to clean tail-pipe gases before they are released, some have already invested in hybrid and electric power trains. Since the late 2000’, sales of pure electric and hybrid vessels have picked up.
Electric boats will be more important in the near future. Electric boats are not only environmentally friendly also getting more and more economical with various benefits – less requirement for maintenance, reduced fuel cost, reduced motor weight compared to ICE with less vibrations and others.
Although a transition is underway, ultimately there will be a co-existence with today’s propulsion technologies because of high upfront cost, high energy and distance requirements for vessels, lack of charging infrastructure and the slowness of change in the marine industry.
This Webinar will bring experts from multiple domains – Electric Boats OEM, Government stakeholders, Vessel Industry Association to discuss following questions:
What cost economics and challenges with conventional vessel fleet and sub-segments?
What sub-segments has highest potential for electric power train conversion? How e-Boats performing in these sub-segments?
What opportunity areas and new innovations in e-Boats happening globally (including solar powered boats, energy storage etc.)?
What success stories in e-Boats and what learning for further design and cost improvements and wider adoption?
What key ecosystem challenges, including policies remain to be solved to drive higher adoption of e-boats?
What drivers for Country and State Governments to act to support e-Boat pilots and setting time targets for conversion/replacement to electric? What if any means for demand aggregation in this space?
Electric Vehicles (EVs), the future of mobility, is generally considered only an urban phenomenon. A number of factors have led to this interpretation like higher upfront costs of EVs, lower financing credibility of the rural region, lack of required strong grid infrastructure, insignificant emission density of the rural regions thus lacking motivation for EV uptake push among others. Assuming, higher cost a rural user has to pay for transportation for different inefficiencies, and high opportunity cost, it is expected that TCO for EVs in rural would come favorable than current cost structure. It is believed that e-Mobility brings efficiency to transportation (EVs 6X efficient from tank-to-wheel energy conversion) and with its required charging electricity quantum has potential to improve energy supply economics in rural for improved energy access. This improved energy access and higher affordable transportation has potential to drive next wave of rural economic growth.
Thus, this webinar jointly organized by pManifold and EST will focus on:
Existing transportation landscape in rural regions, driving factors and economics
Need and suitability (use cases) of EV For Rural Applications
Opportunities, success stories and barriers to develop integrated e-mobility ecosystem for rural regions
Potential business models
Developing ecosystem of e-mobility around battery/ renewable energy to empower rural economy and energy access
Global vehicle sales projections – going from the most pessimistic to most optimistic estimates – indicate between 50 to 150 million EVs will be sold by 2030. Within next 10 years, EVs expected to outsell gasoline vehicles in most markets. Even in India, EV sales for 2 and 4 wheelers grew by 20 per cent in 2019-20. McKinsey, however, has put India under 1 out of 5 score on its Global Electric Vehicle Index’s both dimensions – Market adoption and Industry leadership. Out its 15 countries indexing, India ranks lowest on market adoption score, and 7 th in EV Industry leadership. For being the 4 th largest automotive market globally, it is important for Indian automakers to gear up for indigenous EV development and upskill its legacy teams.
Engineering a system as complex as an EV to meet the requirements of emerging market like India, which is hyper-sensitive in terms of price as well as performance, can be quite a challenge. Other complexities it poses is its very unique traffic conditions and driving styles. India has witnessed many global bestsellers failing in its market due to lack of a consumer-centric approach towards its buyers.
As consumers in developing economy no longer look for confirmation from developed countries for their needs, a bottom-up approach of engineering starting with understanding the customer usage typical to the region of sales is fast becoming a success formula. The vital component of this approach is the virtual model-based development, which can simulate any customer behavior in any region and provide vital inputs to forming vehicle technical specifications. These can further be cascaded to sub-system specifications and component design targets. Virtual model-based development also helps apply the customer usage effects as load cases in design activities, which helps optimize the design for a cost-effective and robust product which everyone likes to use.
This Webinar will bring experts from multiple domains – Pure EV OEM, Mix ICE and EV OEM, Automobile/ EV Industry Association to discuss following questions:
What typical product development cycle followed by automobile manufacturer, and role and impact of modeling and simulations?
What going forward trends in digitalization of product design and development, including testing and calibration by the OEMs?
What skill requirements in product design, prototyping, development, testing, calibration teams to speed up and improve overall reliability and performance of EVs?
Any particular skill gaps in EV teams when compared to mature ICE industry? What trainings would be beneficial?
How to develop right teaching and learning ecosystem on-site at OEMs, and also Engineering education system to advance EV knowledge and hands-on skills?
India’s national EV policy FAME II scheme was launched in Apr 2019 with a target to support over 1.5 million EVs through a financial incentive package of INR 10,000 Crores. Till Feb 2020, the scheme supported 14,160 EVs with incentive disbursement of ~INR 50 Crores. DHI has also approved 2,636 charging stations in 62 cities with a support of INR 500 Crores. Over last three years, several players have come up with alternative charging infrastructure technologies/business models such as battery swapping which could potentially accelerate mass adoption of EVs. Battery Swapping approach to charging infrastructure for electric mobility involves usage of small swappable battery(ies) which may or may not be sold along with the electric vehicle (EV). An Energy Operator (EO) sets up mechanism (bulk or distributed) enabling the drained batteries to be charged and swapped (or interchanged) for the EV user.
This approach allows use of a smaller battery in the vehicle enabling it to achieve the desired range by doing multiple quick swaps in a day, thus reducing the overall battery requirement for the fleet. As the raw material for battery pack (Lithium cell or Lithium ore) is 100% imported today, these alternate approaches can significantly reduce the battery import bill and make the system more efficient.
India EV growth will be unique with 80% of its transport mode dominated by 2-Wheelers, 3% by 3-Wheelers and 12-15% by car segments. The 2-Wheeler and 3-Wheeler segments will use smaller battery packs and most attractive for battery swapping. Several players have invested in building technology and business models using this approach, including SUN Mobility, Esmito, Lithion Power, Piaggio, Kinetic, Ola Electric, Bounce, Exicom, Amara Raja Batteries, GrinnTech, NTPC, PGCIL and others. But there is still lack of clarity of regulatory framework and policy support for this technology.
This Webinar will bring experts from multiple domains – Battery Swap Technology Provider, EV OEM, Fleet Operator and EV Testing Agency to discuss following questions:
1. Has battery swapping technology enough proved its techno- commercial feasibility and reliability? 2. If and what standardization is required to build right consensus in OEMs and battery swapping infra providers for hassle free end-use by individuals and fleet operators and scaled up adoption? And at what levels standardization should happen – OEM level, Operator level, National Level? 3. With new amendment by Ministry of Power (dated 8th June, 2020) which has now recognised battery swapping technology, what further next steps and suggestions for its inclusion in various EV policies?
