Mobility is the next frontier in India’s fight against climate change, and electric vehicles (EVs) can help achieve not just that but also help reduce the country’s oil imports and preserve foreign exchange, taking India to the next level of self-reliance, Piyush Goyal, the minister of commerce and industry, said on Tuesday.
He was speaking at the ET Auto EV Conclave 2022. There is an ongoing revolution in electric mobility in the world, and the local automobile industry should bring that to India, the minister said.
The government was keen to support this industry and has already implemented policies like the Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Electric vehicles in India (FAME-India) scheme, the production-linked incentives (PLI) scheme and a battery swapping policy was in the works, he said.
The minister said that the industry had shown good growth over the past five years but that was on a low base and the industry has a long way to go. EVs account for just 1-2% of conventional vehicle sales in India.
The electric car market in the country has grown almost 10 times in recent years, Shailesh Chandra, the managing director of Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles Limited said while speaking at the same event. As many as 16 states, including Gujarat and Maharashtra, have announced or are on the verge of announcing EV promotion policies, he said. This is helping speed up the transition to EVs in these states.
The Indian electric car market could reach around 30,000 units in 2022 and about 70,000-80,000 units the following year, said Rajeev Chaba, managing director of MG Motor India. In 2021, about 14,000 electric cars were sold in the country. For perspective, about 3 million conventional cars were sold the same year.
Demand was not an issue for the segment as much as supply, Chaba said, adding that the industry was unable to meet the existing consumer demand due to a shortage of parts, including semiconductors.
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