It’s the oddest looking car in India. This quirky, plastic (okay, ABS on a steel frame) two-seater has a visible following in its home town Bangalore, and is travelling to other cities in India and abroad – especially London.
The Reva is electric. It goes less than 80 km on an 8-hour charge (and this declines as the lead-acid batteries age), but is cheap to run. A lithium-ion model charges quicker and runs longer, but costs more.
A Reva i costs Rs 4 lakh. You spend Rs 5,000 a year on electricity if you do 1,000 km monthly (compare with Rs 35,000 in fuel bills for a petrol car). Corporate buyers get 80 per cent depreciation, against 20 per cent for petrol Cars – over Rs 80,000 in tax savings in the first year. Though you’ll spend on new batteries two years later, maintenance is cheap. And there are other tax gains – subsidies in Delhi, for instance, add up to over Rs 1 lakh.
So is it safe, this light, oddball two-seater (you can squeeze in kids or bags in the back)? Well, an earlier model failed crash testing in the UK. The two new models have a reinforced chassis, collapsible steering and front disc brakes, and the Reva i has done well in 40 kph crash tests in India. You may not want to use it on the highway, but it’s a nice little “neighborhood electric vehicle”, as the US classifies it. Europe calls it a “quadricycle”, exempting it from crash tests.
