The State Government is working on providing a boost to electric vehicles in coming years. There are several aims it has set. These include 10 per cent of new vehicle registrations in major cities to be of electric vehicles by the year 2025, all new Government vehicles in the State to be electric ones across identified major cities starting April 2022, setting up 2,325 electric vehicle charging stations including 150 in Nagpur etc. These details emerged in a virtual town hall programme on electric mobility organised by Climate Voices and Majhi Vasundhara campaign, and hosted by WRI India Ross Center for Sustainable Cities and a nonprofit organisation Waatavaran Foundation, on Thursday formed a committee.
Climate Voices is a collective of three organisations namely Purpose, Asar, and Climate Trends. Majhi Vasundhara is an initiative of Department of Environment and Climate Change. Ashish Kumar Singh, Additional Chief Secretary ( Transport), Maharashtra; Dr Avinash Dhakne, Transport Commissioner; Sudhir Srivastava, Chairman, Maharashtra Pollution Control Board (MPCB), discussed the future of electric mobility. Singh, who heads the committee drafting the new electric vehicle (EV) policy, said that Maharashtra’s share in the country’s vehicle registrations was around 12 per cent (32,000) at present, but the size was still not large enough to excite manufacturers.
He added that Transport Department had already consulted stakeholders but was still open for suggestions to the policy from the public. Maharashtra’s new EV Policy2021 draft targets urban agglomerations including Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Nagpur, Aurangabad, Pune, and Nashik. It aims at achieving 25 per cent electrification of intra-city public transport and last-mile delivery vehicles by 2025. The draft policy has an ambitious plan to convert 15 per cent of the existing fleet of 18,000 Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC) buses to electric ones over the next five years. The policy is currently awaiting the final nod from the State Cabinet. Dr Dhakne said that Maharashtra intended to make four highways and expressways ‘fully EV ready’ by 2025.
These include under-construction M u m b a i – N a g p u r Communication Super Expressway, Mumbai-Pune Express Highway, Mumbai Nashik, and Nashik-Pune highways. It is proposed that all new Government vehicles will be electric ones across major cities listed under the draft policy, starting April 2022. The share of EVs in new vehicle registrations across the State in 2025 is expected to be 10 per cent for all vehicles, 10 per cent for two-wheelers, 20 per cent for three-wheelers, and 5 per cent for four-wheelers. As per the draft policy target, at least one gig factory for manufacturing of advanced batteries will be set up in the State. The new policy focuses on infrastructure to encourage people to adopt it. Further, by the year 2025, total 2,325 EV charging stations are proposed to be set up in major city areas.
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