IT TOOK AN OBSESSION TO PRODUCE INDIA'S FIRST ELECTRIC CAR, WRITES G.S.MUDUR

Three times in his life, goaded by an almost instinctive and seemingly insatiable drive that the still has to fathom, Chetan Maini has found himself building a car. Twice it was to grab academic laurels. This time the stakes are just a little higher: The ear he's now building is intended to get civilization to phase out a century old habit.

The Stanford-trained engineer will soon launch from his Bangalore plant India's first electric car for the mass market. It is a product that may be at the vanguard of the global effort to transform electric vehicles from curiosities in science museums and exhibitions, showcasing cars of tomorrow, into inexpensive and easy-to-use machines scrambling for space in city traffic lanes.

"This is a starting point," says Maini, managing director of the REVA Electric Car Company in Bangalore. "People are now ready for a change." And change is something prospective users may look forward to in his electric car - the REVA. It is a small two-door car that can hold only two adults and two small children, won't run faster than 65 kmph, and will travel 80 km before it needs to be plugged into an electricity socket for recharging. But with a price tag of less than Rs 2,00,000 and a promising running cost of 40 paise per km, a fraction of what any gasoline-guzzling car claims, REVA is expected to usher in the age of electric vehicles in India.

The first batch of 50 REVA electric cars will roll out of Maini's Bommasandra plant, 10 km south of Bangalore, between October and December this year. The company plans a slow start, an appropriate pace, for it encapsulates a novel, potentially disruptive technology that has not really taken off even in the developed countries. Although the plant capacity is 12,000 cars per year, the company plans to manufacture 1,500 cars next year and 3,000 the year after that. And 20 percent of the cars each year will be earmarked for an eager global market. REVA encapsulates technologies not seen before in indigenous cars - brakes that regenerate the charge in its batteries, a synthetic dent-proof material called ABS, and two onboard computers and associated electronics that help boost operational performance of the car, and as an option, seals that control the climate inside the car.

"This car is a major advance in terms of technological innovations, substantially ahead of similar efforts elsewhere in the world," says Prof. Melkote Narasimhan, emeritus fellow in the department of mechanical engineering at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore. Narasimhan led an expert panel that last week approved government funding for further research on the REVA project. "And a youngster has made it happen here in India, "says Narasimhan. The 'youngster,' 30-year-old Maini still hasn't been able to pinpoint the defining moment when building cars became his passion, but he's been toying with them since his school days.

"It's something that's always excited me," says Maini. He was 13, a student at the St. Joseph's High School in Bangalore when he designed and built his first car - a remote-controlled, battery-operated car, the size of a shoebox. It won him the first prize at the school science exhibition. Seven years later as a student at the University of Michigan, Maini led a project to built a solar car. The car named Sun-Runner, won a 2,500-km race from Orlando, Florida, to Detroit in Michigan, and came third in a world solar race in Australia, competing against solar cars designed by Japanese and US companies. Maini then headed for Stanford University to pursue a masters degree where the worked on high-efficiency motors for electric vehicles.

After that, he joined Amerigon Inc., a California-based outfit where he worked for several years on three designs of electric vehicles, one of which was destined to later metamorphose into the REVA. An old dream kept tugging him while he was at Amerigon - the idea of building a small compact car for the Indian market. It was a vision shared by his father, Sudarshan Maini, chairman of the Maini Industrial group in Bangalore that manufactures automobile components for some of the world's top car-makers. His son set up the REVA Electric Car Company in partnership with Amerigon, and created an R&D center in Bangalore to work on the ideal future car for Indian cities. With increasing traffic congestion, unendurable levels of vehicular emissions, and nasty road conditions, India seemed ready for a change. "Cars running on solar energy would be too expensive, and hybrid electric cars that worked on both conventional fuel and electricity involved complex technologies, "says Maini. "The best option for now is an electric car."

The technology is actually more than 100 years old. The world's first electric vehicle was built in 1892, but progress was stymled by the emergence of gasoline driven vehicles that were faster, cheaper, and travelled longer distance. They have reigned since the early 20th century. The oil crisis during the 1970s kindled interest in electric vehicles, but studies indicated that with the existing technology, electric vehicles would be more expensive than oil-fried vehicles.

But over the past decade, concerns about depleting, oil reserves and increasing levels of emissions belched out by the Internal combustion engines have led to a resurgence of interest in zero emission electric vehicles.

It may sound paradoxical, but India is a fertile ground to launch electric cars. "A combination of low average driving speeds, traffic congestion, higher fuel prices, and small distances within cities make electric cars an ideal technology for India." Says Vijay Chandy, senior vice president at the REVA Electric Car Company.

The situation in the developed countries is quite different. People there commute longer distances and like to use large vehicles at high speeds. In addition, fuel prices in the US are significantly lower than in India. "These factors make electric cars expensive proposition in the developed countries," says Chandy. The high investments by automobile Industries also constrain their progress in the electric vehicles arena.

"That's not the case in India," says Prof. Narasimhan at the Indian Institute of Science. "We've nothing to lose. We don't have that kind of an automobile industry infrastructure. So will REVA, we can make a beginning and even aim for a globally competitive position," says Narasimhan. Take off in the global electric vehicle industry may have been slow, but foreign car manufacturers are already way ahead. European automakers Citroen, Fiat, Peugeot, and Volkswagen have all introduced their own versions of electric cars.

The big three in the US - General Motors, Ford, Chrysler - have also unveiled electric cars. And Honda, Nissan and Toyota are among Japanese companies trying to gain a foothold in the electric vehicle. REVA is expected to help India grab a chunk of that market. The typical cost of electric cars manufactured in Europe or the US is around US $20,000. "As far as markets abroad are concerned, we believe we have a winner," says Chandy. "Our cost is almost 50 percent less than other similar electric cars. That's no competition at all." A combination of manufacturing techniques, materials, and onboard computers will reduce the manufacturing costs and boost operational performance of REVA, says Chandy. REVA will have body panels made of a high-density polymer material called acrylonitrlle butadiene styrene (ABS), which is dent-proof. Maini holds the patent for the Energy Management System, a computer system that optimises charging and energy use by the batteries to maximise the range, the distance that the car can travel on a charge.

The EMS also estimates the charge available in the batteries, and presents it on a state of charge meter, equivalent to the fuel gauge in conventional vehicles. It also controls the readings on the REVA Instrument panel and can also instantly communicate the health of the vehicle to a hand-held or laptop based diagnostic unit during vehicle servicing. Another novel feature in REVA is regenerative breaking - a small part of the energy used up during the process of braking flows back into the vehicle to recharge the batteries, the process controlled by electronics. Some models of REVA will also have a novel cooling, heating and ventilating system also patented by Amerigon. The system heats, cools, or ventilates using a solid-state heat pump that operates through the seats.

Typical energy consumption is less than 10 percent that of conventional automobile air-conditioners. As with any electric vehicle, REVA is almost noiseless - the only noise being the faint hum of the electric motor - and has no engine, no exhaust, no gears, no clutch. Two onboard computers allow efficient energy management and also help constantly monitor the health of the car. The onboard charger uses 220V, from a 15 A socket, the same used for geysers and air conditioners. It could be charged at home or at work. When fully charged, the car has a maximum range of 80 km. Although relying significantly on technology from Amerigon, local research and development has helped the company source 90 percent of components locally.

This has helped to lower the cost of the car and ensure that spares are easily available. A significant part of the research and development efforts also went into getting the energy management system and the charger to tolerate the high voltage fluctuations that plague Indian cities. The range of the electric car depends on the powerpack - the batteries. REVA is designed to use any powerpack. "Should one be developed in future that gives a greater range, the existing powerpack can be replaced with the new one," says Chandy. Although the battery the cars comes with is guaranteed to work for three years, a change at the end of that period will cost users Rs 25,000. But even adding that amount keeps the running cost of the car below Rs 1 per km. But wouldn't a large population of electric cars simply create fresh demand for electricity and - with much of electricity generation still relying on the burning of fossil fuels increase emissions into the atmosphere anyway?

Electric car proponents dispute this argument. Most users may charge their cars during the late night and early morning hours when electricity demand falls. According to an industry estimate, 40,000 cars on the road each travelling 1,000 km per month would lead to a less than one percent increase in electricity demanded from the grid.

- Ganapati Mudur