“INDIA DOESN'T NEED ARTIFICIAL PUSH FOR EVs”

He is the most passionate ministers of the current Modi regime. He is responsible for India’s dream run to achive 40 km per day road infrastructure and also connecting India through his ambitious national waterways plan. For him, now, e-mobility is the future. In an exclusive interview Nitin Gadkari, Union Minister, Ministry of Road, Transport and Highways, Government of India talks about range of issues – from charging infrastructure to government’s assistance at various stages— that will take India’s e-mobility dream to a next level. While speaking with Rahul Kamat, he urge India’s automakers to ensure maximum recovery of plastics and other composites materials on scrapping of vehicles

- Rahul Kamat

What is your vision and efforts for e-mobility in India and how soon we could see India moving from a country powered largely by vehicles with fossil fuels to predominantly run on electricity?

E-mobility is the future for us which is a highly safer, cleaner and eco-friendly mode of transport. India has surplus electricity and the government intends to have EV cells penetration of 30 per cent for private cars, 70 per cent for commercial vehicles, 40 per cent for buses and 80 per cent for two and three-wheelers by 2030. We don’t need any artificial push for the sale of electric vehicles in India. The economics is so good that due to the low per-kilometre cost, the consumer should naturally shift to buying EVs. Per-kilometre cost of petrol best vehicle is 10/ km, for diesel its 7/km, and for EV its mere 1/km. And, there is a large-scale in-house production demand for small battery-operated EVs like bikes, autos, cars, bicycles in the market. More and more Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) are offering domestic chargers along with the EVs, making it very easy to charge respective EVs at home. Many world-class EV carmakers are available in India and now the battery capacity, driving range and charging mechanism of electric cars are significantly improving.

“Our focus is to make Indian vehicles at par with international standards in terms of crash safety, body design and permissible emission norms”