In a recent panel of government and industry experts at the Mint Mobility Conclave 2022, they talked about the Electric Vehicles transition. According to the Principal Secretary, of Delhi, Ashish Kundra said that Creating the right conditions for the emergence of sustainable new mobility solutions will ensure that the transition to full electric mobility in densely populated and polluted cities “happens faster than people imagine.”
“In Delhi, electric vehicles are over 10% of total auto sales this year. The sale of EVs in Delhi is more than that of CNG vehicles this year too, with this volume being more than the EVs sold in Mumbai, Kolkata, and Chennai combined,” Kundra said at the conclave. He added, “The idea for us, from the government standpoint, is to also incentivize EVs to mitigate the larger issue of pollution. One set of measures we announced in the Delhi EV policy was tax exemptions on EVs and we set a regulatory direction for aggregators and last-mile fleet operators for conversion of their fleets to electric. Now, we have targets for them to convert this to 100% EVs by 2030.
The transition
One way to do that is also via retrofitting of existing vehicles. We are also encouraging a public charging infrastructure where a variety of operators are now participating, and at the same time, we are also facilitating private charging infra. The ecosystem as a whole has to be addressed comprehensively to inspire confidence in people,” he said.
According to Kundra, while the public transport system has traditionally been “fragmented” i.e., the metro or local train systems, state bus undertakings, and private last-mile mobility solutions providers have not cohesively tested and worked on a solution, pilots in Delhi are now testing the viability of some integrated EV solutions along certain areas.
According to Yulu, India’s largest electric micro-mobility network, with thousands of vehicles on the roads in large cities like Bengaluru and Mumbai, there have been challenges with operating the rent-&-go model for electric scooters, popular in several European countries and American states, in India. “We believe there is a need for first-mile and last-mile mobility to facilitate access to public transport. In the case of Delhi Metro, which is the best metro network in India covering a distance of 400 km along various routes and close to 300 stations, the average distance a person has to travel from their home or office to a metro station is over three kilometers. In this scenario, you are likely to use a private vehicle instead of the metro.
Credits- Mint
