BENGALURU: In a major push to encourage electric vehicles (e-vehicles) in the state, the State Government has set aside reservation of 10 per cent parking for electric vehicles, the government is also mulling to increase it to 20 percent later, Principal Secretary, Department of Commerce & Industries, Gaurav Gupta said on Wednesday. He said these parking slots will be equipped with charging points.
Nagesh Basavanahalli, CEO, Greaves Cotton, predicted a move towards electric vehicles and acknowledged the pressing need for charging infrastructure for long journeys.
Talking about another initiative that was initially planned, Gupta said the government had earlier announced that, 2023 onwards, only electric vehicles would be registered.
“But that will not happen,” he said, however, he stressed that there is a need to increase usage of e-vehicles in the state to reduce the carbon footprint.
As far as e-vehicles charging infrastructure was concerned, Gupta assured that a lot of work was being done. "We are (not only) looking at adoption of electric buses, but also to provide charging infrastructure in government premises," he said, adding that installing charging points in petrol bunks seemed to have constrains due to safety reasons.
Setting aside hurdles to electric vehicle industry expansion, like - poor response from bankers and lack of proper public infrastructure to charge vehicles -- e-vehicle manufacturers, are already setting their eyes on changes in the design of vehicles to meet the need of logistics companies.
The existing players believe that e-vehicles would be largely adopted for hyper-local deliveries (from retail stores) in the next three years.
Following e-commerce gaining strength and luring people to excessively depend on having products delivered to them rather than hitting the store, Amit gupta, co-founder and CEO of Yulu Bikes, foresaw dawn of two-wheelers as a mainstream medium to cater to these "hyper-local logistics."
He said that is where e-vehicles with their better monitoring ability and smart technologies would step in — to keep tabs on problems like pilferage of gas or petrol, drawbacks of traffic congestion on mileage of vehicle, and the lack of accountability that persists with fuel-driven vehicles.
"With EV, which are smart, you can track if one really went to a certain place and did his or her job," he said.
While providing for commuters, Swapnil Jain, Co-founder and CTO, Ather Energy, felt two aspects to be crucial for logistics applications — space (in the design) and connectivity (to track realtime).
Forseeing potentials for e-vehicles in school buses to overcome the cost aspect, Shree Harsha, India Marjeting Director, Dassault Systems, felt that school buses could completely move to electric vehicles in the next three years.