Abstract:

India has a huge potential to be a world leader in the electric vehicle industry. This paper aims to develop and validate the factors affecting the sustainable manufacturing of electric vehicles in India that could be used by original equipment manufacturers and service providers in the electric vehicles industry. Based on a thorough synthesis of the literature on electric vehicles, seven factors – technological, social, cultural, economic, political, geographical, environmental – of sustainable manufacturing of electric vehicles and corresponding 67 variables have been developed. The validated instrument of factors affecting the sustainable manufacturing of electric vehicles may be used by original equipment manufacturers, service providers and new players keen on entering the electric vehicle market to assess the potential areas of development in the electric vehicles industry. Insights gained from this evaluation can be helpful for EV engineers in incorporating customers’ purchase intention into the engineering design. The validated results are in the Indian context, however, the instrument developed can be used in the global context as well. Results  showed  that  the  most  important  among  the  7  factors  was  the  technological  factors, followed  by  the  environmental  factors.  Fuel  price  and  purchase  cost  of  the  economic  factor were also found to have comparatively higher relevance than  other  factors.  Geographic  and  cultural  factors  were  the  least  relevant  factors  affecting  sustainable  manufacturing  of  electric   vehicles   in   India,   and   hence   does   not   require   immediate attention.