Niti Aayog may not yet be ready with their policy recommendations for electric vehicles but they are considering other ways through which they can make legislatures to reduce the carbon footprints of their respective states.
In a recent report Financial Express has reported that one of the the emerging thoughts from Niti Aayog is to ask state governments to achieve certain carbon footprint targets, with instructions on how to achieve this target through an electrification of their public transport force.
This will ensure that new orders coming out for vehicles coming out of State Transport offices will have a certain percentage of electric vehicles as well. Official spokesperson for the government think-tank added that for the country to successfully change to electric vehicles a behavioural change from the consumer, not EV policy, is what is necessary.
As of now, many state transport corporations have already introduced EVs into their fleet including Mumbai, Hyderabad, Manali, Kolkata and Bangalore. All of these have gone the electric transport way under the government’s FAME (Faster Adoption of Manufacturing of (Hybrid &) Electric Vehicles) scheme.
As a part of the National Electric Mobility Mission Plan, FAME has a corpus of Rs 800 crore which was allocated for a period of two years that ends in 2019. However, it is likely that this date might be extended to further drive electric vehicles in state transport systems. This nudge from NITI might result in more of the FAME corpus being used.
While the centre could potentially advise state government to drive for electric vehicle, NITI Aayog is still under the impression that market sentiments should be allowed to take their natural course in terms of personal transportation. At present India has about 1.5 lakh electric vehicles on Indian roads, with the segment projected to grow to 5% of all vehicles on the road by 2023, compared to 2017-18 where EVs accounted for less than 1 percent of all cars sold.
The organic growth will allow time for the ecosystem required for electric vehicles to grow incrementally, simultaneously bringing the costs of the vehicle down.
