India to push EV sales

A radical plan to ensure every car sold in India will be powered by electricity

by the year 2030, has been unveiled by the country’s government.

It would lower the cost of importing fuel, reduce air pollution and lower costs for running vehicles, the International Business Times reports.

“We are going to introduce electric vehicles in a very big way,” coal and mines minister Piyush Goyal told the Confederation of Indian Industry Annual Session 2017 in New Delhi.

“We are going to make electric vehicles self-sufficient. The idea is that by 2030, not a single petrol or diesel car should be sold in the country.”

Goyal says the electric car industry would need between two and three years of government assistance.
“The cost of electric vehicles will start to pay for itself for consumers.”

An investigation by Greenpeace this year found that as many as 2.3 million deaths occur every year due to air pollution in the country – only a fraction less than tobacco use, the Independent reports.

Goyal says the electric car scheme would first target “larger consumer centres, where pollution is at an all-time high”, like Delhi.