Nitin Gadkari, Minister of Road Transport and Highways, confirmed that government won’t increase taxes on diesel and petrol cars to promote EVs
Globally, automotive industry is moving towards green cars to reduce pollution. Indian government is also taking different initiatives to promote electric vehicles but the lack of infrastructure and price of these vehicles are creating a big problem for EV revolution. Indian government via EESL bought electric cars from Tata and Mahindra for senior officials.
But these senior officials are not using EVs because they offer average range and performance. The battery size is small compared to global standards as price was a factor in deciding this. EESL cancelled second tender of 10,000 EVs as they are currently working on new specification and range to encourage people to use EVs more.
Some media reports suggested that government might increase tax on diesel and petrol cars to help sales of EVs. Nitin Gadkari, Minister of Road Transport and Highways confirmed that government won’t increase taxes on diesel and petrol cars and they are planning to promote bio-fuel like ethanol, methanol, bio-diesel, bio-CNG and more.
Initially, more importance will be given for these types of fuels and ethanol can be produced by farmers which will help them to improve economy, government is working on various ways to impliment this. Nitin Gadkari also confirmed that they are not going to ban diesel and petrol cars for electric or bio-fuels.
The minister also said that to improve highway infrastructure, they will raise fund from stock exchange and a meeting with Bombay Stock Exchange is going to be fixed in coming weeks to discuss about this and government is expecting positive feedback from them. The minister also confirmed that new Motor Vehicle act will be passed in upcoming parliament session.
The first phase of Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Electric Vehicles (FAME) is completed and second phase is expected to start from September this year. But it doesn’t offer direct subsidies like other countries are offering, which will give confidence for customers to put their money on EV cars.