Government think tank NITI Aayog has rejigged the 2030 electric vehicle(EV) policy back to 100 per cent electrification for all new cars sold. It had downgraded it to 30 per cent last year, after initially announcing a full electrification process.
Reports say that the transport ministry had recently wanted to introduce a bill that would allow only electric three-wheelers from April 2023 and electric two-wheelers from April 2025.
NITI Aayog is looking at giving responsibilities to different ministries to ensure complete phase-out of petrol and diesel vehicles by 2030.
While Bengaluru-based electric scooter maker Ather believes that 2025 is completely doable for 100 per cent electrification of two-wheelers, Honda, TVS, Bajaj have expressed displeasure at the government’s ambitious targets.
The cabinet proposal also mentioned e-highways in which overhead electric wires would help trucks and buses run as pure EVs using pantographs, just like trains and trams. The vehicles can operate as hybrid vehicles once they are off the highway. The service is currently implemented in Sweden (operational) and Germany (test phase).
Taxi services such as Ola and Uber will also have to become fully electric by 2030.
Apart from setting up charging infrastructure for EVs, NITI Aayog stated the sops for Giga-scale battery manufacturing. The annual subsidy for that will be around Rs 8,000 crore and it will be given to manufacturers after the actual sale of batteries, capped at 20GWh per company.
Currently, Mahindra is the only car maker that sells pure EVs. Tata had supplied the government with a couple of thousand electric Tigors. The market share of electric cars is minuscule right now. However, a lot of manufacturers such as Maruti, Hyundai, Renault, Nissan, Ford, Tata, Mahindra, Audi, and Jaguar have announced launches of their electric vehicles for 2019 and 2020 in India.
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