There are three overwhelming reasons why India needs to urgently put together a policy to support road transport systems based on technologies other than the conventional internal combustion (IC) engine vehicle.

One is the rapidly rising air pollution levels in our cities which can be directly attributed to the ballooning vehicle population. The second reason for looking beyond IC engine based transport is strategic. These vehicles are fuelled by petro-products and it is well known that India is resource poor when it comes to petroleum.

And that brings us to the third reason for organising support to vehicles powered by non-petro fuels. The automobile giants of the developed world have long recognised that petro-fuels have had their day.

During the last two decades, individually and as consortia, these companies have mounted colossal research programmes to evolve vehicle technologies based on alternative fuels. Various alternatives are being tried: battery-electric, solar electric, fuel-cell electric, hydrogen (compressed or stored in metal hydribes), electric ic engine hybrid and others.

Some of these technologies, such as battery powered electric vehicles have reached the fringes of commercialisation, some are in the prototype stage and some still concepts.

This developmental effort has been complemented by the governments in the form of various "push-pull" measures involving a combination of fiscal and financial incentives and legislative pressures. Unfortunately, in India where the introduction of zero emission vehicles on our city roads is much more desperately needed such positive encouragement is not forthcoming from the state and central governments.

Take the case of the REVA, developed by the Bangalore based Maini group specialising in making material handling equipment and precision components for the automobile industry. The Mainis have jointly with the California-based Amerigon inc., a specialist in electricity vehicle systems, come up with the REVA, a two-door, battery powered sedan that can accommodate two adults in front and two children in the rear.

Six years in development, the REVA is not a jerry built electric car in which a battery pack is tacked to the chassis of an existing IC engine car. On the contrary, the REVA has been designed, from scratch, as an electric town car suited for the typical Indian city.

Its size, shape and steering, characteristics are ideal for negotiating narrow, crowded roads and paucity of parking space. Its body is of ABS plastic which can withstand denting. It employs special electronics to make use of the braking energy (brakes are often employed in India's start-stop traffic) to recharge the batteries.

As of now, the REVA is powered by a 10.4 kwhr high density tubular lead acid battery pack which gives the car a range of 75 to 80 km per charge. The Mainis have plans to introduce a different type of battery system so that the range can be enhanced to 120 km per charge.

In its technology and capabilities, the reva is head-to-head with similar sub-compact electric cars recently developed by auto giants such as ford, fiat, nissan and suzuki. Unfortunately, the reva has not yet got any of the fiscal and regulatory support that its rivals in other countries are getting. Forget about government subsidy, there is no move to even exempt it form central excise duty and state sales tax. The reva costs around the same as a maruti 800.

This price is admittedly is limited to commuting within the city. However, because of its low running cost (one-third that of the maruti 800), it could be an attractive buy provided the individual customer could get some sort of a write-off on his income tax.

The important point to bear in mind is that, unlike in the case of ic engine vehicles, where the indian automobile industry was fobbed off with obsolete discards from the west, in the area of ev technology, which is the future, an indian company owns contemporary intellectual property.

Because of its significantly lower cost compared to similar evs developed by global auto giants, the reva has good export potential.

-N. N. Sachitanand