Despite the high duties, India's first electric car is making its presence felt

Ethanol-blended petrol or bio­diesel? CNG or LPG"? The ongoing controversy over which fuel is clean­est has a quiet player that made its appearance on India's roads in mid­2001. Enter the REVA, the first com­mercially manufactured car that runs on electricity.

Former tyre salesman Dilip Nand­keolyar, back from a stint in Dubai, discovered how high taxi fares and car-hire charges have become in his home country. He got the idea of Centre and in the states for excise and sales-tax (ST) concessions. They have had some success: the Union govern­ment has exempted the REVA from Central ST; but state STS are a different matter. So while the car's home state Karnataka and a number of others like Delhi, Goa, Pondicherry and Rajasthan have exempted it totally, Delhi and Tamil Nadu levy a conces­sional 4 per cent, against Maharashtra's 13 per cent.

launching a self-drive service that would allow people to go from point to point at a lower cost. In Mumbai, air-conditioner (AC) dealer and service provider Farhan Pettiwalla was look­ing for a cheaper way for his techni­cians to attend maintenance calls around the metropolis. Both discov­ered the REVA.

"I want to set up enough pick-up and drop points in various cities so that people can take these cars when they go on work, shopping, visiting, leave them somewhere convenient without having to worry about park­ing, and get it - or another car - to move on or back," says Nandkeolyar. "With the REVAls low running cost, they will spend less than autorick­shaw fare!" Adds Pettiwalla: "The cost is almost zero compared to the 18 Maruti vans I am using now. With traffic in Mumbai being what it is, I also have to employ 18 drivers!"

From looking at their own needs, Nandkeolyar and Pettiwalla moved on to become REVA dealers. Yes, they Nonetheless, the company has been roIling out SO REVAs a month since it was launched in mid-ZOO!, and hopes to triple this to achieve full capacity in the next six months. What really excites Maini today, however, is a 5()()' car order from the UK - of which he has just despatched the first 40. About the same number of REVAs have also been sent abroad for test marketing, and attracted Ivery good' response from countries like the US, Japan Nor­way and Malta. "We have had an extremely high export focus," he says. "That's why we pave not concentrated so much on the Indian market."
admit, it looks expensive at Rs3 lakh plus - particularly for what looks like a toy among the big new models on the roads. Chetan Maini, managing director of the Bangalore-based REVA Electric Car Company (RECC), how­ever says you must look beyond the initial investment: "It costs only 40 paise per kilometre to run," he points out.

QED? Not quite, with both RECC and the Electric Vehicles Association of India (EV AI) - as well as dealers - lobbying the governments at the centre and in the states for excise and sales-tax(ST) concerssions. They have had some success: the Union government has exempted the REVA from Central ST; but state STs are a different matter. So while the car’s home state Karnataka and a number of others like Delhi and Tamil Nadu levy a concessional 4 per cent, against Maharashtra’s 13 per cent.

Nonetheless, the company has been rolling out 50 REVAs a month since it was launched in mod-2001, and hope to triple this to achieve full capacity in the next six months. What really excites Maini today, however, is a 500 car order from the UK - of which he has just dispatched the first 40. About the same number of REVAs have also been sent abroad for test marketing and attracted ‘very good’ response from countries like the US, japan, Norway and Malta. “ We have not concentrated so much on the Indian market.”

The company had to make over 130 changes to make the rechristened G-WIZ acceptable to the European market and get-EEc certification. G­WIZ has features like climate-con­trolled seats (ccs) and remote-control heating, making it the first such car in the international market. "It is a tech­nical marvel even by global standards, stemming from seven years of intense R&D," Maini claims. In the UK, the car is getting government support in the form of road tax exemptions, 100-per­cent depreciation and waivers of con­gestion charges and parking fees.

Now that his dream car has driven into the international scene, however, Maini intends making it available all over India, too. RECC already has deal­erships in Bangalore, Jalandhar, Chennai,]odhpur and Pune. Its REVA Seva and REVA Lok schemes offer cus­tomer support from the company and other users, respectively. The deluxe variant of the REVA, launched at last year's Auto Expo, also has ccs, upgraded interiors, a blower and defroster with a heater, and a stereo system. The REVA also has a dent- and rust-proof plastic body, steel frames, the smallest turning radius of 3.5

metres, an energy management sys­tem and automatic transmission. The integrated regenerative braking sys­tem enables the battery pack to get charged as the car slows down.

RECC, a joint venture between the Bangalore-based Maini group and AEV LLC of the US, was incorporated in 1994 and got its prototypes certified by the Automotive Research Associa­tion of India in 1996. By the time of the commerciai launch, it had 10 patents from seven years of research and development (R&D).

“Chetan has always been very active in this field," says his father Sudarshan Maini, chairman of the eponymous group that also makes high-precision automotive compo­nents and in-plant electric material handling equipment. "He has had this idea for more than 20 years. He was very active in solar car racing, while he was studying engineering at Michigan, and executed an electric and hybrid vehicles project during his Master's at Stanford." Adds Chetan: "I have always been interested in cars, even as a kid. At Michigan, I was involved in making a car powered by a hair drier, which ran 3,000 km. This started my excitement in EVS, and I specialised in them at Stanford." In his ill years plus of experience with EVS, he developed half .a dozen elec­tric, solar and hybrid-electric vehicles. He holds an US patent on an energy management system for EVS. Before RECC, he also worked for five years with General Motors and Amerigon Inc in the US.

It will have a load capacity of two tonnes and will find use in engineering industry. Though Maini Materials Movement Pvt. Ltd is manufacturing over 200 varieties of handling equipment, they were being exported to OEM suppliers under different names.

But this time, Maini Materials is planning to pool its resources together to produce the Hand Pallet under one roof and then export it overseas under the Maini brand name, So far, Mainis have exported over 10,000 to 15,000 units and the division earned a revenue of Rs.18 crore.

"The demand for Hand Pallet Truck is 4,000 pieces, while the world demand is 0.5 million. We will be exporting around 90 percent of it. We hope to increase our revenue by 25 to 30 percent this year," he added.

The Rs. 75 crore Maini group has also joined hands with a German firm Berger to manufacture hi-precision components and is planning to explore South African market for granite exports.

Ever the realist, Chetan Maini's projections even two years ago were modest. "I am prepared for a slow build-up," he told Business India in December 2001. "We will do a couple of thousand in the first two or three years, not a lakh!" With buses, three ­wheelers and other EVS picking up, however, he hoped to achieve this fig­ure in about five years. The EV AI - set up in December 2000 to bring about synergy amongst those involved with the EV industry in India - agrees: it has projected 120,000 EVS by 2007, without government support. If the government were to jump-start the EV programme, of course, these figures could go up multifold, an association spokesman says.

“REVA is a wonderful vehicle and the cheapest in the world despite the all-imported battery pack," says ARAI director B. Bhanot, who was associ­ated with the project and instrumen­tal in getting it funding from the government's Technology Develop­ment Board. "It has with it so many positive technical features, like regen­erative brakes and glass fibre body; and the AC system is unique - it cools not the entire car but only the seats. Chetan Maini has done a good job, all on his own - hats off to him!"

Users are happy, too. Pravin Pan­garkar, who runs a software company in Pune to provide document man­agement systems and other solutions to pharmaceutical companies, bought a REVA for his wife. "I was looking for an automatic car," says Pangarkar, who himself drives an Opel Corsa. A friend's REVA 'amazed' him with its maneuverability and smooth steer­ing. "The car is fabulous!" he says. “The AC also exceeded my expectations on how much the battery could give." Retired Bombay Municipal Cor­poration chief engineer Ashok V. Bumte is more flowery: "It's a fasci­nating, tantalising little wonder, a dream-cum-true vehicle!"

Maini spent three years to develop the unique quick-charging system, which ensures an 80-per-cent charge in two-and-a-half hours. But many users still have 'issues' about charg­ing, he admits. While the company's dealers offer 'REVAlation points' and instal charging stations in buyers' garages and in office parking areas, RECC is also talking to those running large commercial premises, like multipIexes and malls, to offer the facility o their customers while they shop, eat or watch a movie.

Internally, RECC has a DSRI-recog­lised R&D unit at its Bangalore facility, which is working on further indigeni­sation of the car and developing newer models. “We also have a testing centre to ensure that each REVA rolling out is safe and reliable," Maini says. "The company's vision is to establish a tradition of excellence and leader­ship in environment-friendly urban transportation by offering the best value and highest quality electric vehicles for city mobility." As chair­man Sudarshan Maini says: "The 'zero concept' philosophy of the group is the guiding principle of RECC, too: zero defects, zero time delays, zero inefficiencies and, of course, zero pol­lution." That would be a real, quiet REVA-lution.