Role of smart materials and digital twin (DT) for the adoption of electric vehicles in India

This paper aims to integrate Industry 4.0 technologies, precisely the Digital Twin concept and smart materials, with the Electric Vehicle (EV) industry, to complement the adoption of Electric Vehicles (EVs) in the Indian market. In the current scenario, the adoption of EVs in India faces challenges ranging from insufficient charging facilities to the difficulties related to the complicated connections inside an EV, making the repair and maintenance of these vehicles quite arduous and costly. This paper specifically deals with the complexities regarding the repair and maintenance of EVs and aims to ease the process to ensure a bright future for the EV industry in the Indian markets. Throughout this paper, different challenges regarding the repair and maintenance of EVs are discussed. The solutions to overcome these challenges with the help of various Industry 4.0 technologies and smart materials will pave the way for the smooth and efficient adoption of EVs in the Indian markets. The paper also discusses the significant research challenges associated with the study and its future scope in the industry. The findings of this study enabled us to recognize a variety of smart materials that the EV industry can use in their cars which will make the maintenance of EVs much more affordable by cutting down the heavy costs incurred in getting the dents and scratches repaired if the vehicle meets an accident. Also, the use of Digital Twin in the servicing and repair of EVs will make the process a lot more convenient by reducing the service time and related costs drastically. Further in our study, we have described in detail the working process of DT and smart materials in the EV industry to achieve the goals of this study.