A Drive to Change

Written by Alexis / 12 January 2009 / Read Alexis's latest blog entries.

It wasn’t until the 4th day that I realized the magnitude of what we were doing. On January 3, 2009, a group of passionate individuals launched on a Climate Solutions Road Tour, an epic month-long 3,500 km journey from Chennai to New Delhi, India to demonstrate that clean transportation solutions do exist and call upon automakers globally to build them.

On the 4th day of this adventure, January 7, I truly understood the seeds of revolution that we were planting on our “Drive to Change.”

With a loud flag-off by the CEO of Reva electric cars in Bangalore, I zipped out of the city and onto the newly constructed national highway. 140 km later, we pulled off at our first electric car charging point: an Indian Oil petrol station. The irony was not lost on any of us. A few dusty petrol pumps stood in stark contrast to the landscape of pristine farmland and green hills. Several abandoned lorry trucks slept by the side of the road.

We dined at the dhaba (Hindi for “road-side restaurant”) as our vehicle batteries quietly charged adding 25 km for every hour of charge, and listened to Mr. Sharma’s, the station owner, vision for the future. “I feel honored to charge these electric cars at my station. I have never seen these cars on this highway though I have seen them in Bangalore city before. Within ten years, electric cars can replace diesel and petrol and I hope to have an electric charging business. Diesel and petrol make too much pollution. We need electric cars for our planet.”

Indian Oil is one of the largest oil companies in India and maintains stations neatly placed along the highway at perfect distances from each other. This is ideal, I thought, not only for fossil fuels, but for electric car charging as well. “What if,” my mind raced,” every petrol station transitioned into an electric car charging station as well? And what if they all had solar roofs for charging too?!”

The following day as we neared Hyderabad, our next major city, we met with a startling crisis. Our one diesel vehicle (with the solar roof for laptop and camera charging) had run out of fuel and we were unable to re-fill. Newspaper headlines ran “India Fast Running Out of Fuel” (The New Indian Express 9 January 2009) and the article opened, “Petrol pumps in many parts of the country, including Hyderabad, went dry and more are expected to run out of stock….” We searched frantically, but every diesel station we passed was closed and barricaded with truck drivers sitting idle on the side of the road. The crisis started off as a strike by truck drivers calling on the government to lower the fixed price of fuel. Fuel station owners then retaliated in protest with a counter-strike that shut down stations in urban areas across India.

I quickly called the electric car team, which was traveling about 50 km behind us, to ask if they could pick up some fuel for us on the highway outside Hyderabad. Again, the irony! Even in an electricity starved country like India with shortages of 16% on average, we found power more reliable that traditional oil for several days. Although the shortage of oil was only temporary, it highlighted the delicate “energy security” situation that India faces with oil imports at 80% and no domestic sources.

We have covered 1,000 km of roads already in our solar electric cars, nearly a third of the total distance planned. As we continue, the momentum will continue to grow and our conviction will strengthen that the world already has the green mobility solution. The journey will end in India's capital, New Delhi on February 4th, a city adding 1,000 new car to the streets every single day, in a grand finale highlighting transportation alternatives for the city, from Reva electric cars to the metro, bicycles to buses. We are on a “Drive to Change” and we hope that the rest of the world will also drive the change in transportation solutions that we need to see.