As the name suggests, the electric vehicle rally that began at Maitighar Mandala and ended at the Spinal Injury Rehabilitation Center in Sanga Saturday had a dual purpose. One aim was to raise awareness of high import duty of electric vehicles restricting their mass use in Nepal and the other was to raise money for patients at Spinal Injury Rehabilitation Center. [break]
The rally raised Rs 600,000, which will be enough to pay the fees of patients at the Rehabilitation Center for a period of one year, according to Kanak Dixit, organizer of the event.
With these two causes in mind, 21 Revas and various other electric vehicles headed towards Sanga on Saturday morning.
Rajesh Dhital, who was driving one of the Revas, had many praises for the electric mini. “
"It´s the best thing for our city. It´s small, economical (a full charge of 10 units will give you 80 kilometers), and most importantly for our polluted streets, emission-free," says Dhital.
But Dhital, like most others present at the rally, fret about the exceptionally high price tag. The current price of a Reva is Rs 1.8 million, which is well above that of most startup cars in the market.
But why should such a small car which doesn´t even have an engine cost so much?
Puran Rai, manager of Eco Visions, the company that brought the Reva to Nepal, says that when he first ordered five Revas from India in 2001, the tax on electric vehicles was only 10 percent but complex logistics at the customs didn´t allow the cars to enter Nepal until the tax had gone up to 140 percent.
Many feel that it´s the petrol car lobby that pushed up the import duty on electric vehicles. This, however, hasn´t stopped Reva sales in Kathmandu.
"We have sold 29 cars till now, and we have more orders," says Rai.
Rai´s main buyers are donor agencies, INGOs and foreign embassies, which do not have to pay import duty on their cars. Rai agrees that it´s impossible for the Reva to break into the conventional car market in Kathmandu.
An alternative they might well be and all the electric vehicle types in Kathmandu did make their presence felt at the rally Saturday. While the majority of the cars were Revas, there was one Safa tempo, one electric van, a few electric scooters and one converted van.
Sanjay Shrestha of Shree Eco Visionary Private Limited was sporting his Mitsubishi van, which he had converted to electric by fitting in an electric motor and six batteries at a cost of Rs 350,000. And his happens to be the only converted electric vehicle in Nepal at the moment because Nepal doesn´t have a set of rules for converting conventional vehicles into electric.
Kiran Joshi, an investor in the Nepal Electric Vehicle Industry which is one of the makers of the Safa Tempo, said that conversion is the way to go for Nepal.
"We don´t have the technology to produce electric cars in Nepal but we do have the technology to convert conventional cars into electric for less than half a million," says Joshi.
He feels that conversion would be the best way to deal with aging vehicles in Nepal. But then again, the authorities just aren´t interested in doing so at the moment. Whiles obstacles abound, the electric vehicles of Kathmandu slowly and silently made their presence felt between Maitighar and Sanga Saturday. All the participants looked pleased with the contribution they made to the Spinal Injury Rehabilitation Centre, but their wish to see customs duty on electric vehicles reduced might not be fulfilled in the near future.
kushal@myrepublica.com
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