The Indian government wants to entirely eliminate oil derivative fuelled cars in favour of electric vehicles. It intends to ensure that by 2030 not a single petrol or diesel driven car will be sold. Its main objective is to reduce the fuel import bill and the running costs of vehicles.
"We are going to introduce electric vehicles in a very big way. We are going to make electric vehicles self- sufficient. The idea is that by 2030, not a single petrol or diesel car should be sold in the country," power minister Piyush Goyal said while addressing the Confederation of Indian Industry Annual Session 2017 in New Delhi
Goyal is of the view that initially the government can handhold the electric vehicle industry for 2-3 years to help it stabilise. Citing the example of car maker Maruti Suzuki, he said that the government had supported India's largest car maker initially, which eventually led to development of a sizeable automotive industry in the country.
Subsidies will initially be used to encourage the uptake of electric cars but New Dehli hopes that by 2020, with a dramatic increase in one-charge range and the variety of electric vehicles on offer, simple demand will take over.
• The German environment agency is calling for a quota system to dramatically increase the sales of electric vehicles across the European Union. The chief of the Umweltbundesamtes (UBA), Maria Krautzberger, told German newspaper Die Zeit that having just 25 000 registered electric cars out of a total German car population of 46 million is no longer acceptable, and that Germany and the rest of Europe is fast falling behind other areas such as California and China when it comes to e-car policies.
“A target of 12 million electric vehicles [by 2030] is an ambitious goal which we won’t reach if we rely solely on the car industry. That’s why we need to give carmakers a quota. I know this is controversial, but it’s been successful in California and they’re now introducing such quotas in China” said Krautsberger.
By then, it would seem, India will have already overtaken Germany and likely the rest of Europe too.
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