India is at a crossroads. It has been wavering for years, pure EV or hybrid, flex fuel or hydrogen. The government signals one direction, the industry bets on another, and the consumer is caught in the middle of a transition nobody has fully committed to. Billions are being invested, policies are being rewritten, and the stakes — energy security, manufacturing jobs, global competitiveness — have never been higher. To make sense of all of it, there is perhaps no better person to turn to than Mr. Bhargava, Chairman of Maruti Suzuki, to talk to us on the automotive industry and to tell us more on how things are panning out in the mobility sector. Welcome to the show, sir.
So, first of all, we'd like to understand from you, you know, there are too many things happening in the automotive sector — EV strategy, electrification, flex fuels, rising petrol prices, and this is because of the West Asia crisis. How are you seeing the current scenario in the Indian market?
See, there's obviously a churn going on in the technology front. Because globally we all need to get to zero carbon and reduce the emissions in the air so that breathing becomes a little easier. It's not that cars alone are causing the breathing problem, but it's amongst the other pollutants. So, people are looking at all kinds of technologies. EVs, the technology which was globally acceptable for most car makers, recently has come a little less favorable in many car manufacturers. Many big companies have had to write down huge amounts of money in billions of dollars because the demand for EV cars from customers has not come up to the projected levels.
But that apart, we in India have to look at what is our best solution to meet these objectives — net zero and emission reduction. And here, we have always maintained that it has to be a combination of technologies. No one technology is going to do the job for us. And we have to have EVs, we have to have biogas, we have to have ethanol, we have to have hybrids. So, we have to go through all these. Ultimately, none of these may be the answer. You may find that there's some other way, let's say hydrogen. So, this will keep happening. For a century or more, the IC engines continued without challenge because there was no other objective before the automotive industry. Today, we have different objectives. So, that's why this churn is happening.
Touching specifically on the electrification, one country, China, has largely dominated the battery manufacturing, even the rare earth materials, motors and everything. What is your view — where does India stand, does it have a chance in becoming that powerhouse of giving the energy to the mobility sector?
See, the possibility of beating China on electric cars, as long as the technology remains what it is today for batteries, is very, very difficult. They're way ahead. They're ahead of the Japanese, they're ahead of the Americans, they are ahead of the Germans. And we are far behind all of them in terms of R&D. So, for somebody to say that India will become the leader of electric cars is really not based on any reality.
But all this is based on a static situation. India has a lot of intellectual capacity. It's unfortunate we don't spend adequately and effectively on doing engineering and other R&D work. But we are beginning to do that. If we can develop some new technology and some new materials which could be used for electric cars, we could then become the leader. But the leadership in this industry is very much determined by your ability to have a technology which is superior to others. And that's where the challenge is — can we as a country develop a technology which will be better than the Chinese technology?
Right. And do you think biogas, ethanol do stand a chance here?
They are for zero carbon. But biogas or ethanol do not solve the particulate emission problem. Electric cars also don't solve that problem, except locally. As long as you are going to continue to use coal as a fuel for electricity, or you are going to spend a lot of energy in mining of materials and such things, because then you'll also be polluting that way. So, one really has to look at the totality. And we haven't yet found a solution, as far as I'm concerned, which will meet the total objective of net zero and extremely low particulate emissions.
I think maybe hydrogen is the ultimate answer. But that requires a lot of R&D to be done.
Right. So, this path to net zero, if you put all these fuels and energy mix, what will be the priority order from your side? Is it the hybrid first, like you said?
It depends on the time when you're talking about. Today's time for net zero, biogas would be the number one fuel. Ethanol at equal level. Then you get to CNG. Then, electric cars are better than petrol cars even with today's coal burning. So, then electric cars, and then petrol cars and diesel cars. But we don't have enough CBG. And nobody has invested adequately yet. We don't have enough ethanol. So, these are all hypothetical answers. The reality is that EVs is today the only answer.
Okay. Hybrid is a stopgap solution?
Hybrid is a solution which improves the fuel efficiency of a car. Therefore, the emissions, whether it's in terms of carbon or particulate, per kilometer of running becomes about 30% lower than a normal petrol car. In which case, depending on how your electricity is generated, with how much coal — in today's condition where electricity in India is about 75% coal — actually a hybrid is a little bit cleaner than an electric car in terms of net zero. But as we improve our use of renewable energy, solar or wind, and the use of coal goes down in the generation of electricity, this will change.
