The government of India is currently under the process of forming a new policy for vehicles. It had taken the help of National Institution for Transforming India (NITI Aayog) to form a report with suggestions and recommendations to improve the mobility in the country.
NITI Aayog has submitted a 90-page report to the government which contains suggestions which, if applied, would change the automotive industry in the country. The report focuses purely on electric vehicles and not hybrid vehicles. Reducing tax and interest rates on electric vehicle loans to capping of petrol and diesel vehicle sales in India are two of the most important suggestions put up by the think-tank.
India plans to slash its oil import bill to half by 2030 and also reduce the emissions as a part of its commitment to the Paris climate treaty. The government knows that the poor sales of electric vehicles is because of high battery costs and lack of proper infrastructure for charging. In order to kick start this massive shift, NITI Aayog has suggested bulk procurement of electric vehicles, building standardised, swappable batteries for two- and three-wheelers to bring down their cost and having favourable tariff structures for charging cars.
The think-tank has also recommended to set up battery swapping stations by 2018, common manufacturing facilities for components and increase subsidies on all battery-run electric vehicles to bring down their cost on par with conventional models by 2025. There are other suggestions too like lowering tax and interest rates on loans for taxi fleet operators and also reducing the duties to make these cars more affordable.
This report will be officially released in a few weeks. It would be interesting to see if the government will take a bold step forward in implementing all these suggestions.
