With a sudden surge in E-hailing cab services, the government is drafting a scheme to encourage the use of commercial electric vehicles in city transportation. The scheme is said to let go the necessary permits that are required to run commercial E-vehicles. This move has the potential to transform the electric mobility sector in the country, as per the government.
“We want to push electric mobility in a big way. We are proposing that all permits that are required to run taxis should be removed in case the vehicle is electric so that running electric commercial vehicles get easier than running on other fuel. It should also be done for commercial vehicles such as buses and trucks,” Gadkari said, as mentioned on ET.
The minister also said he’s working on a scheme where state transport corporations can get all their old buses converted to electric vehicles. Out of the two schemes, Gadkari said he is first looking forward to “remove national permits at least.”
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Taxi aggregators going green
It is tipped that Bangalore-based cab service Ola is already working with the government to introduce a fleet of 300 electric cars in Nagpur to test the feasibility of electric taxis.
The ‘e-vehicle movement’ started off when Ola and Softbank had made a proposal to run electric taxis in India to the government’s think-tank NITI Aayog which then was forwarded to the road transport and highways ministry, an official told ET in a statement.
Permits and regulations
Permits are issued by state governments to commercial vehicles on basis of their categories such as Contract Carriage Buses Permits, stage carrier permits, goods carriers, maxi cab, radio taxis and all India tourist permit.
Acquiring and renewing the permits is a hefty process and can be costly at times.
Accelerating towards green combustion
Minister of Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari had visited Tesla Motors plant last year and had invited the company to make India its Asia manufacturing hub; he had offered them land near Kandla port.
Last month, Tesla founder Elon Musk had responded, “Hoping for summer this year” to a query of entering into Indian market on Twitter.
Gadkari has also proposed various subsidies for electric vehicles and is already in talks with the finance ministry to get necessary exemptions.
Will this change the situation?
As the budget 2017 had no incentives for hybrid and e-vehicles, the idea of omitting certain permits while purchasing commercial vehicle will definitely provide a boost, but providing sales quota can be a total game changer.
Other countries like Germany are looking to provide purchase incentive for electric vehicles after its environment minister suggested a three percent sales quota for EVs.
