India Mulls Slew Of Incentives In Electric Vehicles Policy

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India is likely to announce a dedicated policy for electric vehicles, which would include a number of incentives for buyers of these vehicles.

According to media reports, NITI Aayog has been assigned the task to come up with a policy to encourage adoption of electric vehicles on a mass scale. Some of the incentives being discussed, and could be included in the final policy, are use of green colored number plates (which may further allow for additional facilities available to EV users), free parking for a period of three years, and exemption from payment of toll charges.

While financial incentives have not been seriously discussed in the public domain by the government so far, some of them could be implemented by the Ministry of Finance through budgetary announcements. Rebates in taxation for production of EVs and their parts could be introduced, as has been the case with conventional vehicles few years back which led to massive increase in production and sales of a certain class of vehicles.

Waiver of or reduction in registration charges and discounts in insurance premiums could be another set of incentives, however, the latter may be a more complex decision and would have to be led by the insurance companies after understanding the operational dynamics of EVs.

Several power utilities are looking to develop a separate tariff structure for EV charging which could also include some incentives.

The government may have to offer some innovative incentives that benefit the consumers directly. Ministers in the Indian government have mentioned publicly a target to stop sales of fossil fuel-based cars by 2030. In order to make this drastic change in such a limited span of time, the government would have to take on board not only the automakers but also the end-consumers.