Published on January 6, 2018

The government's premier policy making body, has firmed up a hybrid vehicle policy that challenges the electric vehicle mission that's being pursued aggressively, pitching methanol as a better alternative for India. The Aayog has reasoned that electric vehicles are neither cost-effective nor sustainable. Methanol-based hybrid vehicles, it proposes, would run on electricity that would be generated on board from the chemical, a senior government official aware of the matter. The crux of the reasoning is that methanol can replace gasoline as it is easily available, does not cause pollution and has higher electrical mobility and efficiency, besides being highly cost-effective vis-a-vis electric vehicles, which would run on lithium-ion batteries. It would reduce pollution and India's dependence on fossil fuels.