NEW DELHI — Chetan Maini, the engineer who pioneered India's first electric car, had his eureka moment two decades ago when he drove a vehicle fuelled by solar power across the blazing Australian outback.
Now Maini, the man behind Reva Electric Car Co., is building in southern India what he says will be the world's biggest factory making battery-powered city commuter cars.
"It's the first attempt at mass production of a green car," said Maini, who studied hybrid electric technology at California's Stanford University and developed the no-clutch, no-gears Reva as head of a 75-member engineering team.
"With growing climate change awareness, I think we're at the tipping point for electric cars," Maini told AFP in an interview.
