India delays plan to roll out 10,000 electric cars to 2019
Prime Minister Narendra
Modi's administration is aiming to have more than 30 percent of vehicles run on
electricity by 2030 in a bid to lower air pollution and curb reliance on fossil
fuels
Current Affairs
News: India has pushed back a deadline to put thousands of battery-driven
cars on the road by nearly a year, in a setback to its ambitions of
having electric vehicles comprise
about a third of its fleet by 2030.
State-owned Energy Efficiency Services, which is responsible
for procuring electric cars to replace the petrol and diesel vehicles used by
government officials, will roll out the first 10,000 vehicles by March 2019,
Saurabh Kumar, the agency’s managing director said. EESL issued its first
tender for 10,000 cars in September. It planned to roll out 500 cars by November
and the rest by June.
“The need for building more charging points for 10,000 electric cars and states
being slow in taking deliveries are the reasons for the delay,” Kumar said in a
phone interview. There are about 150 cars in the capital New Delhi and about
100 in southern Andhra Pradesh state and other provinces as of now, Kumar said.
Of the about 200 charging stations built for these cars, over 100 are in Delhi.
Prime Minister Narendra
Modi’s administration is aiming to have more than 30 percent of vehicles run on
electricity by 2030 in a bid to lower air pollution and curb reliance on fossil fuels.
Cheap fossil fuel-driven
cars and an absence of state subsidies for electric vehicles make purchases by the government and
companies critical for EV sales, according to BNEF, which expects EVs to
comprise about 7 percent of sales in India by 2030.
“These tenders are the largest drivers for EV demand” during
the next three to five years, according to Allen Tom Abraham, a BNEF analyst in
New Delhi. “If these large procurement programs falter, auto-makers would
prolong any plans they have to introduce mass market EVs in India.”
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