Business India ×
 Climate Change

Mobility
Published on: Aug. 10, 2020, 9:01 a.m.
Whistledrive is saving money and the environment with its new electric cars
  • WhistleDrive’s electric cabs combat climate change

By Sekhar Seshan. Consulting Editor, Business India

The Hyderabad-headquartered cab fleet operator WhistleDrive has taken the road to help limit climate change by introducing electric vehicles (EVs) to pick up and drop its corporate customers. “We had a trial run with some 50 EVs in some of our clients’ transportation - and it's a big hit!” says the company’s operations director Prashanth M. “The best part is that we were able to reduce their overall transportation cost.”

With worldwide experience showing that EVs reduce emissions compared to the normal petrol or diesel cars, WhistleDrive is taking advantage of many multinational companies having shown interest over the past five years in adopting electric fleets for their employee transportation.

Finding that the adoption is increasing year by year, the company also realised that the benefits of driving EVs are highest in nations that use fewer fossil fuels in generating electricity. The average emission from electric cars over their lifetime have also been found to be up to 80 per cent lower than that from petrol cars.

In India, the current transportation industry is just the same from the time it started, with the same fuels being used by most vehicles whether they are in private, public or corporate transportation. The government is, however, encouraging individuals and companies to adopt more EVs with incentives and subsidies.

Corporate travel constitutes about 40 per cent of urban transportation, with more than 60 per cent of the workforce, excluding those on domestic and agriculture, using their own transport. This causes a lot of traffic congestion in the cities, deteriorating air quality and increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

The current Covid-19 crisis has brought concerns towards environment, health and safety (EHS) to the fore and the corporate industry may adopt a higher percentage of vehicles in its transport systems. This is expected to double or treble taken the number of EVs from a maximum of 5 per cent of any operator’s fleet.

WhistleDrive, which operates in Chennai, Bengaluru and Pune besides its home Hyderabad, is striving to build safe and efficient mobility solutions as the advent of shared mobility has motivated urban transportation to take baby steps towards sustainable transportation.

“Sustainable transportation and shared mobility are going to be the next disrupting markets,” predicts WhistleDrive founder Rakesh Munnanooru. “As trip volumes slowly increase from ground zero, this is the best time for anyone to do trial runs and drive change in the transportation industry towards sustainable transport sooner than expected. We believe we should be the first and the last generation talking about or doing something about climate change.”


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