Government plans to sell only electric vehicles by 2030

India’s minister of state for power, coal and new and renewable energy, Piyush Goyal, during the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) Annual Session 2017 in New Delhi, revealed that the Government is planning to make all the cars sold in India by 2030, only electric. This is in line with the Government’s ambitions to make India the first country to go the fully electric mode in cars.

“We are going to introduce electric vehicles in a very big way. We are going to make electric vehicles self-sufficient… The idea is that by 2030, not a single petrol or diesel car should be sold in the country,” Goyal said.

Though he believes the electric car industry will be able to stand on its own without any impetus from the Government and grow strongly, he feels that, the industry might require some push for the first two three years to get the wheels rotating.

“The cost of electric vehicles will start to pay for itself for consumers. We would love to see the electric vehicle industry run on its own,” he said.

The plan, though ambitious, is not an easy one to achieve. In fact, the top 15 cities by sales have atleast 10 lakh cars each which are powered either by petrol or diesel. New Delhi has around 7.35 million cars closely followed by Bangalore at 4.1 million and Chennai at 3.7 million. In the financial year that ended in March 2016, India had bought only 22000 electric vehicles. While a Year on Year (YoY) comparison will reveal a growth of 37.5 percent, it is still a far cry and constitutes only a fraction of our country’s annual sales. For an ambitious idea of going all electric by 2030, we are completely off course, for now.

Also, to ensure an increase in the adoption rate of electric cars and to to boost the electric vehicles sales, the Government should provide some sort of incentives to both the manufacturers and customers. Currently, only Mahindra, sells its all electric range of cars in India, the e2o and the e2o plus.

We, really hope that, India sees a quicker adoption of the electric cars in the near future.Though we are a bit skeptical about the plan of going all-electric by 2030, the high ambitions set will definitely drive the country towards the goal.