Madhya Pradesh Govt Working on EV Policy

The Madhya Pradesh government will soon come up with an electric vehicle policy in a bid to increase facilities for EVs and bring down pollution levels, state’s urban administration minister Jaivardhan Singh said.

As per the minister, the government would also emphasize on introducing electric buses and vehicles for public transport in the future. And, the electric vehicles would be initially operated in big cities like Indore and Bhopal.

The upcoming policy would also regulate e-rickshaws and other vehicles besides developing required facilities for such vehicles, Singh said.

Meanwhile, the Bus Operators Confederation of India (BOCI) has said 90 percent of 19 lakh public transport buses in the country is being run on tradition fuel – diesel.

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“According to our estimation, 19 lakh buses, including 1.5 lakh buses in the government sector, are being run in the country, and 90 percent of them operate on diesel engines, but the number of electric vehicles is very less,” said Prasanna Patwardhan, president, BOCI.

According to him, nearly 500 electric transport buses are currently plying in ten cities including Mumbai, Kolkata and Pune under a pilot project.

“Though awareness is increased there is still a lack of adequate infrastructure for these vehicles. A large number of charging stations need to be built across the country so that these buses can be charged, especially during night hours,” Patwardhan said.

Listing the challenges in operating e-buses, he said: “It takes a long time to charge batteries of e-buses as per the existing technology. Secondly, even after fully charging the battery, an e-bus can be run up to 150 km.” In such conditions, bus operators are forced to use conventional fuel like diesel. He, however, hoped that basic infrastructure for the e-buses would be improved by the year 2030.

Elsewhere, in a major push to eco-friendly public transport in Andhra Pradesh, public carrier APSRTC will shortly procure 350 electric buses. The electric buses will ply in Vijayawada, Amaravati, Visakhapatnam, Tirupati, and Kakinada on a pilot basis.

In Jammu and Kashmir, the state government under Governor Satya Pal Malik has decided to run electric buses in Srinagar city, the summer capital of the state. As a pilot project, the city will get 30 buses, early next month.