I have a puzzle for you, It’s a puzzle about economics, business models, corporate structures, valuations, and Elon Musk. Naturally, it involves electric vehicles (EVs).
I’m in the minority of Indians who own an four wheeler and two wheeler respectively, but within that circle, I’m part of the majority whose vehicles run on fossil fuel and not electricity. At some point in the next couple of years, I’d like to change my car. I’d like it to be an EV. Aside from standard things like design, pricing, and performance, perhaps the most important feature for me and others in my shoes will be the availability of public charging infrastructure for the cars we buy. The more the number of public charging points, the lower my “range anxiety”.
But the moment I buy an EV, my perspective changes. Instead of being dependent on public points, I’d then look for a way to reliably charge it at my home or office. So I’d be more interested in home charging options. But there’s also the fact that an estimated 70% of Indians do not have dedicated parking for their vehicles, thus ruling out dedicated home charging.
What a paradox finally??? We know how Elon Musk and Tesla solved it. They set up a US-wide network of fast charging “superchargers” and linked them up to Tesla’s onboard software so that it would become “impossible” to run out of power in a Tesla in the US.
But India isn’t the US, and less than 0.5% of cars sold in India are electric. So, how would you solve this? Let me rephrase. How would you solve this if you were India’s largest EV maker with over 70% of the market share currently? And a seller of traditional fossil fuel automobiles with a countrywide network of dealers and service centres? And if you were also one of India’s largest power generation companies? And if you also made Lithium-Ion batteries and assembled them into car battery packs? And if you were also a 153-year-old conglomerate desperate to make all the pieces of this puzzle fit, so the discount that investors usually apply to conglomerates for their inefficiency could potentially be turned into a premium? For instance, by raising $1 billion for your EV subsidiary (an internal startup?) at a valuation of $9.1 billion?
How would you solve this puzzle as the Tata Group if you were confident that India was at the inflexion point for EVs?
Think about it. The graphic below is from the articles based today on www.multimediastudio.net on subject matters..
