In line with the Government of India’s vision of achieving 100 percent e-mobility by 2030, National E-Mobility Program has been launched in the country. The program is aimed at providing impetus to the entire e-mobility ecosystem, including the vehicle manufacturers, charging infrastructure companies, fleet operators, and service providers.

The Minister of Power, R.K. Singh, flagged off the program which will be implemented in the country by the Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL).

EESL will aggregate the demand by procuring electric vehicles (EVs) in bulk to get economies of scale. These electric vehicles will replace the existing fleet of petrol and diesel vehicles.

EESL had signed contracts to procure 10,000 EVs last year and will issue a new tender very soon for 10,000 more EVs to cater to the increasing demand.

With these 20,000 electric cars, India is expected to save over 5 crore liters of fuel every year, leading to a reduction of over 5.6 lakh tones of annual CO2 emission.

Commenting on the development, Singh said, “The future is electric. In most parts of the developed world, cooking is electric, and many countries have announced dates to phase out their diesel vehicles. Even our IIT teams have developed electric cooking system and we are going to go electric and go green”.

Inviting the industry to be part of India’s EV growth story, Singh added, “My message to industry is, come and invest in manufacturing of e-vehicles and batteries”.

Speaking on the occasion, the power secretary, Ajay Kumar Bhalla said that the government is focusing on creating charging infrastructure and policy framework so that by 2030 more than 30 percent of vehicles will be electricity vehicles.

During the launch program, it was also highlighted that there would be no need for license for establishing the charging infrastructure in country and the tariff for this would be less than ₹6 (~$0.09).

Recently, Mercom reported that the EV sales in the country are expected to grow in the double digits until the year 2020, according to a joint report by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) and global advisory firm EY.

India is now targeting the deployment of 5 million to 7 million electric vehicles across the country by 2020 under the revised National Electric Mobility Mission Plan (NEMMP) 2020, released in August 2017.

In the recent past, Karnataka and Maharashtra launched their own EV policies that provide various subsidies and incentives to consumers.

Previously, Mercom also reported that the electric vehicle (EV) market in India is slowly beginning to gain momentum after three years of relative inaction. However, India still falls far behind other nations when it comes to EVs.

Image credit: EESL via Twitter