Road transport and highways minister Nitin Gadkari will urge heavy industries minister Mahendra Nath Pandey to come up with a production-linked scheme to set up hydrogen filling stations in the country.
"India needs to set up hydrogen filling stations across the country to make it easier for people to use vehicles powered by biofuels and hydrogen. I will soon speak to Mahendra Nath Pandey to look at a PLI to set up hydrogen filling stations," Gadkari told Moneycontrol in an interview.
In March 2022, Gadkari travelled to Parliament in a hydrogen-based fuel cell electric vehicle. He said the objective was to spread awareness about hydrogen-based technology for vehicles.
India currently has only two hydrogen refuelling stations one each at Indian Oil's R&D Centre, Faridabad and National Institute of Solar Energy, Gurugram. NTPC is going to start the operations of India's first public green hydrogen fuelling station by December in Ladakh, which will be used to supply fuel to five hydrogen fuel cell buses.
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In January 2023, the Union Cabinet approved Rs 19,744 crore for the National Hydrogen Mission.
This amount included Rs 17,490 crore for the Sustainable India Green Hydrogen and Technologies (SIGHT) programme, Rs 1,466 crore for pilot projects, Rs 400 crore for research and development, and Rs 388 crore for other mission components.
Gadkari said the government is looking at ways to get the automobile industry to shift to using greener fuels over petrol and diesel. He expects the vehicle-scrapping policy to contribute the most to reducing air pollution.
Scrapping policy
"The scrapping policy is the biggest way to get rid of old polluting cars and it will not only help reduce air pollution but will also likely increase automotive sales by 18 percent," Gadkari said.
He said the scrapping policy will help automobile companies save about 33 percent on raw material costs by re-using vehicle material. The government is in talks with automobile companies to provide discounts for purchases against scrapped vehicles to promote the scheme.
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According to Gadkari, scrapping of older vehicles will reduce India's reliance on imported metals such as aluminium and copper as well as rubber.
India introduced a scrappage policy for old and unsafe vehicles in 2021. Under the policy, the government had proposed to scrap and de-register private diesel vehicles older than 10 years and petrol vehicles older than 15 years.
In April 2023, the government further announced that government vehicles and buses older than 15 years would be scrapped.
As part of the vehicle scrapping strategy, the Central government has provided a Rs 2,000 crore incentive to state governments.
Gadkari added that he expects demand for electric vehicles to grow in the coming years and their sales to increase fourfold. Demand for electric vehicles will rise as their production costs fall.
Total EV retails between January and August 2023 stood at 965,868 units 65% higher when compared to the same period last year.
"When we started manufacturing EVs, the cost of manufacturing a lithium-ion battery was around $130 per kilowatt hour, which has fallen to around $115 per kilowatt hour currently, and in due course of time, the cost will fall below $100 per kilowatt hour," Gadkari said.
The minister pointed out that Jammu & Kashmir holds an estimated 5.9 million tonnes of lithium ore that can be used to make cheaper batteries for EVs.
He added that while the initial cost of owning an electric vehicle may be higher, the monthly savings easily help to recover these costs.
"We spend around Rs 30,000 on petrol and diesel per month. This falls to around Rs 2,000 for electric vehicles," Gadkari said.
The minister said the government is looking to build electric highways across the country to make it easier to charge EVs on long journeys.
India has aspirations to become the world's largest automobile manufacturing hub. Gadkari added that in the past nine years, the automobile industry has grown from a Rs 4.5 lakh crore market to a Rs 12.5 lakh crore.
(Watch this space for more updates from this exclusive interview)
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