announcing in parliament that we already make 81 of all lithiumion batteries we needthe wise old man of the industry rc bhargava once again implored to look for indian solutions rather than cutcopypaste what irked most speakers and attendees was him saying that it may take a good 1015 years for the ev movement to show results for once i do agree with the basic principle he is talking about however the general tone was ebullient with the current ev numbers the new kids on the block were the toast while the legacy brands had to look responsible enough and seen to be talking electric and green and blue and all things nice and beautifulthe twoday conclave made me do some research and come up with some basic postulates will we have enough power for the evsthe national thinktank niti aayog has projected that the per capita electricity consumption will increase from 1075 kwh in 2015 to 29112924 kwh in 2040 the projection of energy consumption by transport doubles from 2022 to 2040indias installed national power grid capacity as on 31122020 was 375 gw of which only 36 is renewable and this is the capacity the current generation and usage data show that of a total generation of 1598 twh of electricity in fy19 798 was fossil based only 173 was from renewable sources it is expected that by 202930 this should go up to 447the national electricity plan 2018 claims the nation has surplus power generation capacity and there will no more nonrenewable power projects apart from the fresh 50 gw coalbased projects which are all psurun of which 14 gw are in earlystage setup to cover for the old 48 gw plants that could not comply with the flue gas desulphurisation norms to control pollution from the plants meaning it is not blue at allthis basically means that right now we are grossly under equipped to power all the evs we wish to make and operate in this countryeven in 2030everyone is dirty hereiqair released its world air quality report 2021 on tuesday march 22 of the top 15 most polluted cities in the world 10 are in india all in the north and all of them huge centres of industry infrastructure projects and power generation transportation and biomass combustion also add to the malaise except for delhi in the list the other 9 have rudimentary public transport systems of the top 100 cities 63 are in india of which half are in haryana and uttar pradeshwhile old transport systems contribute hugely to the quality of air power generation from coal and diesel generator sets in industrial complexes play a larger rolethe power generation would just get bigger with more electric vehicles and given that we have declared ourselves power surplus do not expect too much of clean power generation by the time we celebrate the 100th year of independence with more coal generation pm25 nox and so2 levels will rise also wind hydro and solar quite frankly