Electric mobility has been growing in India. There have been many changes with policies with electric vehicles. This has been done in order to promote electric vehicle purchases. All this will see momentum when Indian manufacturers start making Electric vehicles. In the past few months, all the major manufacturers have been seen testing their electric vehicles. The Union Territory (UT) of Chandigarh is one such region that the vehicle will be seen with an EV only policy. The administration has prepared a draft EV policy, which has been seen by our sister publication Autocar Professional. The UT of Chandigarh has become the latest entrant in the list of states with a draft of EV policy. The other states that are into this are Maharashtra, Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Bihar and others.
Chandighar has the highest density of vehicles. It has around 1.2 million vehicles. All of these are combustion vehicles and create pollution. With this new EV policy, the government is expecting to cut down pollution and improve air quality.
This city is a smart city and is undergoing to be one of the Smart Cities Mission of the Ministry of Urban Development. The Chandigarh Transport Undertaking has been floated a tender that 40 electric buses and charging stations will be developed. The Joint Electricity Regulatory Commission has fixed Rs 4 per unit and Rs 100 as a fixed monthly charge on the electricity bill of charging station. Chandigarh is on its way to becoming “one of the world’s leading clean vehicle cities” and also promotes “R&D, innovation and skill development in (the) EV sector.” Towards achieving these objectives, the UT proposes the following:
The Department of Transport, Chandigarh, will be the nodal department for the implementation of Chandigarh EV Policy. An EV Steering committee will also be constituted under the chairmanship of adviser to the Administrator, Chandigarh to suggest measures for the implementation of the policy.
The committee will look into measures to support the acceleration of EV uptake in Chandigarh; make a stakeholder group for procurement of EVs for government use; ensure that systems for charging and payment are as accessible and user-friendly as possible; propose a number of places on streets in the city where charging points for electric vehicles can be located without major disruption to road-users, street cleaning and waste collection services; and study best practices all around the world for deployment of EVs.
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