Analysis on Implication Viability of Three-Wheeler Electric Rickshaws Penetration in Indian Market

In today’s world, global warming is a serious issue of concern due to its effects on earth’s surface in various aspects. Under the Paris agreement, most of the countries agreed to set the emission reduction target and pursue their efforts to achieve this goal. Out of various causes for the global warming, CO₂ emissions by the transportation sector have contributed about quarter of the total global emissions. One promising solution to bring down the tailpipe emission from internal combus-tion engine vehicles is electric vehicles. Studies inferred that, though the tailpipe emission is absent in electric vehicles, it emits greenhouse gases indirectly through its source of primary energy, which is majorly coal-fired thermal power plants. Upon that the manufacturing of Li-Ion batteries used in electric rickshaws emits huge CO₂ emissions which depend on battery emission factor in the range of 121-250 kgCO₂/kWh. So, it is very much important to estimate and compare the CO₂ emis-sion by electric vehicles against conventional vehicles before completely accepting the replacement of conventional vehicles by electric vehicles. In this chapter, we have thoroughly reviewed various literatures regarding the lifecycle analysis of elec-trical vehicles and to examine that a brief analysis on well to tailpipe CO₂ emission by three-wheeler rickshaw segment in Indian market is estimated. Our preliminary analysis prima facie shows that the penetration of three-wheeler electric rickshaws replacing the conventional internal combustion engine rickshaws does not bring down the CO₂ emissions to support the emission reduction target unless the primary source of energy is shifted to low greenhouse gases emitting renewable energy sources like solar or wind energy. Surprisingly, the results also showed that by increasing the thermal power plant efficiency to 40%, around 10.14% of CO₂ emission reduction is achievable, but this does not help to achieve the nation’s emission reduction targets.