World Environment Day: Is India Ready For Bigger EV Adoption Feat Audi E-Tron

In Delhi and Mumbai traffic is a big issue and here the e-tron being an EV helped us with its regenerative braking while the range ticked on.

The Audi e-tron, unlike some EVs, managed to fend off the potholes or speed breakers of Delhi, and Mumbai with ease.

Source : Somnath Chatterjee

Should you buy an EV? That is the big question and one that we have tried to answer many times but this time we decided to see for ourselves. No doubt that EVs have increased in market share and in the luxury segment people are buying EVs more due to being able to experiment more along with being open to technology. However, is India also ready with the infrastructure to support the increasing EV adoption? For this, we used one of the best-selling luxury EVs to drive it in two cities — Delhi and Mumbai — to see how easy it is to live with an EV.

The Audi e-tron comes with a massive 95kwh battery pack and meanwhile gets two motors which develop 400bhp at its sportiest setting. In the city, the burst of performance with instant torque is felt and that makes for a smoother driving experience. The lack of noise and the instant power is indeed a boon in the city and that is what appeals to me the most. The Audi e-tron, unlike some EVs, managed to fend off the potholes or speed breakers of Delhi, and Mumbai with ease and there was no expensive sound of the underside scraping. 

In Delhi and Mumbai traffic is a big issue and here the e-tron being an EV helped us with its regenerative braking while the range ticked on. In both cities, the e-tron managed a comfortable 300-350km range while we did use it for acceleration runs too.

If you are running low on charge, there is a setting which preps the car to save more range. We did not need it though but we did start our search for charging stations when the e-tron nudged 30 percent for its charge. Both cities have a rapidly improving charging infrastructure and one that has improved from previous years. There are apps which help you locate a charging station while the Audi app also has this feature-which we used.

A lot more chargers have crept up over the years and one that is evident now. In Mumbai, there were plenty of chargers but one of the issues seems to be some of the chargers being listed as not being in a workable state or will start soon. 

After some finding, we did find a DC charger which does show that India is behind in terms of getting faster chargers but these are indeed cropping up. In Delhi, we also used an app to get a charger and these days, there are more nearby restaurants plus Malls.

 

That is convenient which means we had a meal when the car was getting charged- also car parking attendants at malls keep the EV parking separate which helps. While more chargers have cropped up, more still need to be added but in the cities, driving an EV is now pretty stress-free with enough chargers covering all of the areas- something which was not seen even a year or two earlier. A regular AC charger takes up around 8 hours but we did not need a full charge hence, with some calculations, the e-tron helped us manage range anxiety very well. In short, you can use an EV in the city and there are enough chargers should you need a quick top-up plus using the apps is becoming more and more trouble-free. Sure, taking a road trip outside cities in an EV takes some calculations but for city use, there is very little beating an EV.

All EV makers install a charger at your home and that saves time but in our case, even if you do not have one or use street parking, you can charge it but you need to map out your time carefully while also reserving charger time. It might seem more complicated than just running to a pump but it isn't so and for basic city runs as we discovered, the infrastructure has improved. With more and more EVs coming in, that does augur well for us.