Government sets modest target for electric vehicle sales: Report

As climate change makes itself more and more felt, fossil fuels are being looked at as something that needs to be changed. In an effort to move towards something more sustainable auto companies have no doubt started moving towards the electric path. And while the road will be long and hard, it is not undoable. Here are the electric cars that are already on sale in India.

The Centre aims to achieve the target of increasing the sale of electric cars in India to 4 percent of the overall new vehicles sales in the next five years, starting from 2018-19, according to a report in Mint.

The government has taken into consideration the possible roadblocks in the process of adopting electric mobility while setting this target. It is for the next stage of the Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Hybrid and Electric Vehicles (FAME) scheme, according to documents from the department of heavy industries.

In 2013, National Electric Mobility Mission Plan (NEMMP) was launched by the then prime minister Manmohan Singh, which aimed to achieve sales of 5-6 million electric and hybrid vehicles by 2020. This is much higher than the current targets set by the government under FAME.

A source told the paper that the government has realised the intensity of the challenges that electric mobility poses, or any other form of future technology unless there is proper infrastructure present. “There are other challenges regarding development of local manufacturing of components which will take some time. As of now we are way behind the target set by NEMMP.”

The first stage of FAME was launched in March 2015 for two years. It was extended twice till March 2017. In April, the scheme was extended for six months till the second stage draft could be clear.

A senior DHI official said: “We will get the scheme approved by September and are hopeful that there will be no further extension after September. We have already sent the draft to the finance ministry.”