Freight is responsible for a significant amount of CO2 emissions within transport. Within this sector, heavy commercial vehicles that run long distance freight and logistics contribute a disproportionate share of CO2 emissions - about 45% of total CO2 emissions from all road transport.
In the total vehicle stock of just over 200 million in India, the share of two- and three-wheelers is 80 percent, but their share of fuel consumption, not surpsingly, is only 20 percent. Heavy commercial vehicles comprise only about 2% of total numbers, but their contribution is much higher as noted earlier.While the eventual goal should be to electrify these heavy commercial vehicles, that will take a while.
Within commercial vehicles, even though the three wheelers do not provide the dramatic decarbonization benefits as could HCVs, starting off with a relatively low-hanging commercial vehicle segment is a useful way to start,
That's what Tata Motors has done with the electric version of its popular Ace.
What is interesting to note is that the company has approached its electrification effort with an ecosystem perspective - the e-Ace has an excellent support and efficiency ecosystem in the form of EV support centers for maximum fleet uptime, and through deployment of Tata Fleet Edge their fleet management & optimization solution.
