The Indian Government is planning to push electric vehicles in the private taxi service sector. According to sources in the government, very soon directives will be issued to taxi aggregators like Uber and Ola to convert 40% of their taxis to electric mode by 2026, reported Live Mint.
Both the companies need to start converting their fleet into electric cars by next year to obtain 2.5% electrification by 2021, 5% by 2022, 10% by 2023, and 40% by 2026.
The government is trying to bring the electrification of cars in an attempt to cut the import of crude oil, and to arrest the air pollution so that it can meet its commitment of the 2015 Paris Climate Change Treaty.
Earlier, Ola made few attempts to operate electric cars but it failed miserably due to lack of infrastructure and high operation costs.The company in 2017 had launched pilot project in Nagpur, but due to long wait times at charging point, the drivers returned to diesel run cars.
The think tank, NITI Aayog, headed by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi last month convened a meeting with road transport, power, renewable energy and steel ministries’ officials where there was a consensus on requesting taxi operators to convert to electric vehicles.The members also agreed upon selling all the commercial vehicle to be electric by April 2026.
According to sources, food delivery apps like Zomato and Swiggy will also have to convert their scooters to electric mode by April 2023. India has several electric scooty manufacturers like Hero Electric, Okinawa, and Ather Energy. However, when it comes to four wheeler, Tata Motors and Mahindra are the only two indigenous car manufacturer to produce electric vehicle.
China, has already made impressive progress in terms of electrification of cars by setting some EV sales targets and offering incentives to taxi operators to take up clean fuel cars. Surprisingly, India’s EV sales grew to 3600 in last financial year, but only comprise for about 0.1% of the 3.3 million diesel and gasoline cars sold in the country.
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