Maruti Hybrid do have a dual battery system – one Lead acid battery and only a smaller lithium ion battery and therefore minimising requirement of expensive lithium, cobalt , nickel.
You may like to go through this link of Maruti web site.
Regenerative braking , yes I agree EV ‘s also have . But it finally it boils down to (1) total life cycle carbon foot print EV vs Hybrid and that Hybrid is having the advantage of not using any thermal electricity for recharging.(2) TCO- total cost of ownership per km.
When we say Ethanol in Indian context , we would always mean blended Ethanol for the time being as we have already achieved 12% blending and aiming to reach 20% by 2025 without any major engine modification . To that extent we would reduce import dependence. 100% ethanol , flexi fuel Engine would require major engine modification- but the basic IC engine remains the same. Therefore , the manufacturer has to upgrade the same Engine platform , though it may not be feasible to modify existing engines, but retrofitment of ethanol engine may be feasible
Maruti Hybrids has a petrol engine which could run on ethanol blend- which of date 100% oil outlets dispenses only blended
ethanol.
There is no denying that the Indian customers have accepted hybrids in equal numbers vs EV in Car segment and Brazil has millions of hybrids running with flex fuel / ethanol. So ethanol technology can not be challenged. Yes , to switch to 100% ethanol and fiex fuel , right now we may not have the right technology except Toyota. But industries can respond appropriately.
We can always accept or reject a study done by a premier institute, but we can not challenge the ground reality in Indian context and we will have to see how the technology evolves in a country like ours where we would have to depend upon imports which leads to supply chain disruptions depending upon geopolitical situations and volatility in price of imports and the fact remains that to make EV sustainable for long term in Indian context , the industries need to innovate , reduce cost , find alternative to Lithium cobalt nickel and don’t depend upon Govt subsidy ,( FAME 1/ FAME 2/ FAME 3 and so on.
Govt recently withdrawn FAME 2 only to force industry to Innovate and reduce cost which is unfortunately not happening since FAME 1 , 2015.
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