Saar: The 10,000 EVs, out of which 500 were planned for November 2017 and the rest by June this year, will now roll out by March 2019.
Energy Efficiency Services Ltd (EESL), the government body which took charge of replacing conventional cars with 10,000 EVs (electric vehicles) by June 2018, has defined a new deadline for the complete deployment. That new deadline is the end of March next year, which is nine months beyond the original deadline. This was unravelled by a report from Bloomberg.
The publication conducted a telephonic interview with Saurabh Kumar, who is the managing director at EESL. Citing reasons for the new deadline, he reportedly said:
“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.”
He further went on to mention that currently there are about 150 EVs running in the nation’s capital and about a 100 in southern Andhra Pradesh and other provinces. Only 200 charging stations have been built to date, and over 100 are in Delhi itself.
EESL has rolled-out two tenders till date to procure 20,000 EVs in total (10,000 from each tender). The first tender, which was released and closed last year, was won by Tata Motors and Mahindra and Mahindra. According to the terms and conditions, 500 EVs were to be rolled out by November 2017 and the rest by June this year. Earlier this year, the second tender was rolled out to procure EVs for government officials. However, there is no word currently on what’s the status of the second one.
This delay in deploying EVs is nothing short of a dent in government’s ambitions to have more than 30 per cent of vehicles run on electricity by the end of next decade. Moreover, these tenders from EESL were the largest single tenders in the world. If EVs don’t get the required infrastructure in India, chances of bigger automakers bringing their EVs on our shores will be later than sooner.
India is fighting a war against dangerously high levels of air pollution. Delhi is currently one of the most polluted cities, not just in India but in the world. Further delay of EVs replacing petrol- and diesel-powered vehicles will only make the pollution story worse.
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