The Mercedes-Benz India CEO said electric rush neither viable nor wise
Luxury automaker Mercedes-Benz has prompted the government of India “not to rush with the all-electric vehicles push” and therefore foreclose much better technological options for future generations as the world is racing to work on hydrogen and not electricity.
The automaker also called for embracing a less enthusiastic strategy of promoting e-cars arguing that a nationwide electrification of the car industry is just not commercially and technically practical.
Mercedes-Benz India managing director and CEO Roland Folger stated, that “by 2040, the whole world will be driving home hydrogen vehicles. To me the whole strategy to go electric across the country appear like a rushed with idea.”
More significantly, he included, with such a rush we are foreclosing choices for better innovations for the future generations.
Folger was talking with PTI in a freewheeling interaction recently.
The auto industry in the country was taken by surprise after the Prime Minister Narendra Modi government revealed in 2016 that the whole auto market would go electric by the turn of 2030.
The statement came on the heels of the government skipping one stage in pollution requirements, and advancing the introduction of BS– VI fuel by two years.
However there have been widespread criticism from numerous quarters that the across the world that electric cars strategy is neither economically nor technologically possible and is based more on impulse than sound preparation, strategy or technology.
Requiring better and coordinated efforts, Folger said, “Preferably, regulators and policymakers need to be totally aligned with what’s occurring on the technology front due to the fact that 5-10 years is a short duration in the auto landscape. The least policymakers can do is to take the auto industry into confidence.”
Explaining that the time frame revealed to go all electric is really short, knowing that the very long-term nature of the car market, he said this would mean that auto business stop investing or developing any more products.
