Auto Expo & its electrifying makeover: The difference that 3 years can make

Fully electric KIA EV6 at Auto Expo 2023. (Express photo by Abhinav Saha)

Currently the union government offers clear tax incentives for BEVs, with practically all other technological platforms clubbed together towards the upper end of the tax bracket. “We’ve got the tech; but we’re waiting and watching”, was a refrain that echoed across multiple carmakers. The other theme that resonated at this year’s Expo was an affirmation of the steady upward shift in the price preference of customers – up from a median price of around Rs 5 lakh a decade ago to around Rs 10 lakh now – which was reflective in the choice of models on display across most pavilions.

The technology focus

There were many firsts for India’s largest automobile show. It was for the first time that platforms such as ‘flex’ fuel vehicles or the hydrogen ICE prototypes were on display.For the first time, there was an entire industry pavilion – the sugar industry that produces ethanol participated in the show and had a standalone presence. Pure-play ICE launches were the smallest ever. And one of the biggest showpieces incidentally came from a component manufacturer rather than a vehicle maker – the Indian arm of Columbus, Indiana-based diesel engine specialist Cummins announcing its plans to start producing a “fuel-agnostic engine systems” at its joint venture plant in Phaltan in Satara district of Maharashtra. Fuel-agnostic engines can run on hydrogen, bio-diesel, ethanol, CNG, LNG, and other fuels. A diesel truck can be retrofitted with a fuel-agnostic engine by swapping its existing diesel engine, and Cummins has tied up with partner Tata Motors to power the latter’s commercial vehicles with these fuel-agnostic engine systems.

The country’s other big commercial vehicle, Tamil Nadu-based Ashok Leyland, has tied up with Toyota Kirloskar Motor for the supply of a Fuel Cell Module to build fuel-cell commercial vehicles in India for proto examination and feasibility study purposes. Across the passenger car segment, alongside the wide array of tech options on display, there were the underpinnings of some clear tech preferences: Tata Motors, which had one of the most extensive vehicle range offerings at Expo 2023, both in terms of new offerings and technology prototypes, seems to be veering around to the view that the hydrogen value chain works best for commercial vehicles rather than passenger cars, while Toyota was seen pushing its manufacturing prowess – flex fuel, fuel cell, hydrogen ICE and BEV – across both the passenger and commercial vehicles segments. The country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki was frugal on new tech, with its biggest showstoppers being two traditional ICE vehicles, including the Jimny mini-SUV. Others such as South Korean manufacturer Hyundai Motor, the country’s second largest passenger carmaker, are holding on to the old vanguard – the promise of the diesel mill. Chinese carmaker BYD made a strong EV push, with its blade battery technology (which boasts of Toyota Motor as a client) on display.

From a pan-pavilion basis, the two new tech priorities seemed to be the hydrogen platform and tapping the ethanol value chain using flex fuel engines, amid a growing realisation that for BEVs, vehicle charging infrastructure in India would be a constraint into the future, the tax incentives notwithstanding.

The Hydrogen Value Chain

There are two broad technological platforms here: the hydrogen fuel cell tech and the hydrogen ICE platform.Traditionally a slow mover in the EV technologies, India has made an uncharacteristically early push in the race to tap the energy potential of the most abundant element in the universe, Hydrogen. This includes a National Hydrogen Mission and a roadmap for using Hydrogen as an energy source. And while proposed end-use sectors include steel and chemicals, the major industry that hydrogen has the potential of transforming is transportation – which contributes a third of all greenhouse gas emissions, and where Hydrogen is being viewed as a direct replacement of fossil fuels, with specific advantages over traditional EVs. As a supporting regulatory framework, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways had, in late 2020, issued a notification proposing amendments to the Central Motor Vehicles Rules, 1989, to include safety evaluation standards for hydrogen fuel cell-based vehicles, and a recent Cabinet push for what is called the Green Hydrogen value chain. The biggest comfort factor for the auto sector in terms of policy support, though, seems to be the entry of two of India’s biggest industrial groups – Reliance Industries and the Adani Group – into the green hydrogen value chain.

While Hydrogen’s potential as a clean fuel source has a history spanning nearly 150 years, it was only after the oil price shocks of the 1970s that the possibility of hydrogen replacing fossil fuels came to be considered seriously. Hydrogen is an energy carrier, not a source of energy, and so has to be transformed into electricity by a device called a fuel cell stack before it can be used to power a car or truck. A fuel cell converts chemical energy into electrical energy using oxidising agents through an oxidation-reduction reaction. Fuel cell-based vehicles most commonly combine hydrogen and oxygen to produce electricity to power the electric motor on board. Since fuel cell vehicles use electricity to run, they are considered electric vehicles.

A big hurdle to the adoption of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles has been a lack of fuelling station infrastructure – even though fuel cell cars refuel in a similar way to conventional cars, they cannot use the same station. Safety is also flagged as a concern. Hydrogen is pressurised and stored in a cryogenic tank, from there it is fed to a lower-pressure cell and put through an electro-chemical reaction to generate electricity. Hyundai and Toyota maintain the safety and reliability of hydrogen fuel tanks is of a level similar to that of standard CNG engines. Scaling up the technology and achieving critical mass remains the big challenge. More vehicles on the road and more supporting infrastructure can lower costs. India’s proposed mission is seen as a step in that direction.

Hydrogen ICE platform

These are similar to conventional internal combustion engine vehicles, and have little in common with hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. Basically, they are ICE vehicles with a few tweaks made to prep tem to run on hydrogen. Certain components of the engine like the fuel delivery system and spark plugs are modified or changed to enable compatibility for use of hydrogen, instead of petrol or diesel. When it comes to emissions, these vehicles are not zero-emission engines like the fuel cell vehicles as the combustion process in hydrogen ICE engines leads to the emission of toxic nitrogen oxides while some carbon dioxide is also released due to burning of the engine oil. In comparison, FCEVs, which use hydrogen to power the fuel cell, are much cleaner.

Flex Fuel tech

A nationwide pilot is currently underway that aims to replicate the commercial deployment of this technology in other markets such as Brazil, Canada and the US. A flex-fuel, or flexible fuel, vehicle has an internal combustion engine, but unlike a regular petrol or diesel vehicle, this can run on more than one type of fuel, or even a mixture of fuels.

The most common versions use a blend of petrol and ethanol or methanol, but these engines are also equipped to run on 100 per cent petrol or ethanol as well. This is made possible by equipping the engine with a fuel mix sensor and an engine control module (ECM) programming that senses and automatically adjusts for any ratio of designated fuels. In a recent interview with The Indian Express, Union Minister of Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari said the push to car makers to adopt flexible engines is part of a broader strategy to cut down on the country’s dependence on imported crude in the medium-to-long run.

The most important benefit is that the use of ethanol blending sharply lowers harmful pollutants such as carbon monoxide, sulphur, and carbon and nitrogen oxides. Another obvious benefit is that blending will help cutback on oil imports for fueling vehicles.

But there are problems: a flex fuel car typically takes a small hit on fuel efficiency when using ethanol for motive power, ranging from between 4 per cent and 8 per cent. Another major problem with ethanol blending is that crops such as sugarcane are usually very water-intensive. Currently, around 9.5 percent ethanol blending with petrol has been achieved in fuel dispensed in pumps in most metros. But this is slated for a major bump up, with the government’s 2025 target of 20 percent blending of ethanol in petrol envisaged in its National Biofuel Policy 2018.