India is looking at having an all-electric car fleet by 2030 with an express objective of lowering the fuel import bill and running cost of vehicles – says Piyush Goyal, Minister of Power, Coal New and Renewable Energy and Mines.
- India aims to have an all-electric car fleet by 2030
- Government plans to introduce EVs in a mass scale in next 3 years
- A new policy for promotion of electric vehicles is under planning
The Government of India is planning to go big on electric vehicles and aims to have an all-electric car fleet by 2030. The major objective behind this is to lower the fuel import bill and running cost of vehicles in the country. Power Minister Piyush Goyal said that the Ministry of Heavy Industries and the NITI Aayog are working on a policy for promotion of electric vehicles. Pointing towards the cost factor, Goyal said that people would like to buy an electric vehicle when they find it cost effective. Currently, we also have the Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Hybrid and Electric vehicles a.k.a. the FAME initiative in India, under which the government offers subsidies on hybrid and electric vehicles.
Addressing the CII Annual Session 2017, Goyal said, “We are going to introduce electric vehicles in a very big way. We are going to make electric vehicles self-sufficient like UJALA. The idea is that by 2030, not a single petrol or diesel car should be sold in the country.” Goyal was also pretty hopeful and said that the government could aid the electric industry in the initial 2-3 years to ease the transition from petrol and diesel cars to electric vehicles before the industry stabilises.
Goyal also spoke about the government’s plan to introduce electric vehicles (EV) in India on a massive scale within the next 3 years. The government will be building charging infrastructure and battery swapping programmes to achieve this goal.
Currently, the electric vehicle market is highly niche with only Mahindra Electric offering all-electric cars in India. For the time being it is the only carmaker which manufactures all-electric cars, which is why Anand Mahindra extended an invite to Tesla’s superboss Elon Musk recently to set shop in India. Musk has been in two minds about coming to India. While in one of his tweets he does mention that the company will be launching in India by the end of 2017, while also opening bookings for the Model 3 for Indians, on the other he mentions that the company won’t come be coming to India anytime soon. There’s no confirmation yet from Tesla about when it’ll hit Indian shores but we expect it to be here by next year.
Beside electric cars, the hybrid vehicle market is in a much better position with several manufacturers like Toyota, Volvo and BMW offering either conventional hybrids or plug-in hybrids in the country. Carmaker’s like Tesla and Nissan have already announced their plan to enter the Indian market with products like the Model 3 and Leaf respectively. And if the government’s plan succeeds then we are likely to see a surge of other global brands enter the Indian market with their electric fleet.
Source : NDTV
