India’s journey towards achieving environmental sustainability is a complex and dynamic equation that needs to take into account more than just a few moving parts. The journey towards sustainability has to be transformational, in that it needs to accelerate the changes of decades of existing norms and practices but subtle enough and not disrupt precarious socio-economic balance too much. A little too much focus on either side and the quadruple transition – economic, social, political and environmental – which India is carefully undertaking, can at the least lose its momentum, at the worst lose its way altogether. It is for this key reason that India’s shift to a path of sustainability has to identify and select key sectors, where even small and incremental changes have large impacts. Mobility has been identified as one such sector, where small changes like a shift to less carbon emitting vehicles can have a major impact on not only people’s life today, but also on future generations. In recent years, more incremental changes have been introduced by state and Central governments to shift towards a future of clean-mobility. The most successful application of this change has been in the consensus that electric vehicles can not only hasten the environmental transition, but keep economic and social transitions in tandem as well. Electric vehicles have the ability to be aspirational and thereby socio-economically transformative as well. The added macro-economic benefits of lowered import bills, increased future-ready manufacturing and services jobs for a burgeoning demographic dividend and ultimate energy independence, truly makes even a gradual shift to electric mobility extremely impactful in the overall transformation story. It is well-known that, in a country like India, vehicle ownership is a sign of prosperity. Ride hailing was able to disrupt this old norm and mentality, giving access to vehicles to almost every income bracket, dismantling the notion that vehicle ownership is mandatory for ease of moving. With economic activity more reliant on the ability of people to move easily, safely and efficiently, ride-hailing in itself was a good first step, while electric ride-hailing takes this one step further. The latter marries not only the concept that a vehicle as an asset has more use as a shared commodity, but that sustainability and environment consciousness do not need to be exclusively apart from this concept. The impact of this evolution, which has to be said is just beginning, can’t be understated. As is well documented, over the last few years, the worsening air quality in the National Capital has called for a dramatic reduction in the number of vehicles on the roads or a concerted switch to electric vehicles. Electric ride hailing ticks both boxes, encouraging the use of shared assets but shifting to electric mobility altogether. In fact, a recent study showed that, if only EVs were added in India between 2021 and 2022, India would have saved about 9.5 million metric tonnes of CO2 emissions. Add that with the potential reduction of one vehicle owned per passenger who used shared mobility services, the impact on the environment and climate change would be phenomenal.
