India To Have Its First Highway For Electric Vehicles By 2020

By 2020, India will have its first highway with charging stations for electric vehicles along the Delhi-Agra and Delhi-Jaipur highways.

According to Abhijeet Sinha, EODB’s National Programme Director at ASSAR, these corridors’ test runs will start this September, and in March 2020, they will be officially launched.

The combined stretch covers 500km and has 18 charging stations in total. 10 will be along the Delhi-Jaipur while 8 will be along the Delhi-Agra. For a densely-populated region like Pari Chowk, “six more charging stations have been proposed,” said Sinha.

The e-corridors are under the Ease of Doing Business Programme proposal of the Advance Services for Social and Administrative Reforms, a private entity supported the government.

The cost of development for a four-lane highway will be somewhere in between Rs 14 crore and Rs 20 crore. It takes Rs 2 crore to set up a single charging station. And the authority wants to uniform the electricity tariff around the states.  At the moment, it is ranging from Rs 6 to Rs for one unit.

In recent years, Indian has seen rapid growth in the number of vehicles. In 2001, the ownership per 1,000 population was 53. That number increased to 167 in 2015.

If there are more electric two-wheeler, Rs 1.2 lakh crore would be saved in importing crude oil.

Sinha emphasizes the importance of developing electric vehicles infrastructure in the country and to attract operators with a large fleet of vehicles like taxi services and state transports.

Earlier this year, a set of guidelines had been issued by the central government on setting up electric vehicles’ charging stations every 25km.

By 2023, the government expects the number of electric vehicles on the road will account for 25% of the total vehicles, further necessitate the need to set up charging infrastructure around the country, as stated by the Union Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry.