NITI Aayog released the Battery Swapping Policy to bring greater efficiency in the EV Ecosystem. The idea was indicated in the Budget 2022 where considering the constraint of space in urban areas for setting up charging stations at scale, central government had promised to roll out a battery swapping policy and formulation of inter-operability standards to come up the sector’s efficiency. The move will also encourage the private sector to develop sustainable and innovative business models for ‘Battery or Energy as a Service’. Under the plan, Data Centres and Energy Storage Systems including dense charging infrastructure and grid-scale battery systems will be included in the harmonized list of infrastructure. This will facilitate credit availability for digital infrastructure and clean energy storage.
Earlier, July 2019 had witnessed a whopping Tax boost for EVs as the central government slashed down the GST rate on electric vehicles (EVs) from 12% to 5%. In the same year, the government also mandated green license plates for battery-operated vehicles. In its efforts to further promote use of EVs, centre also issued notifications to state govts to exempt permit and minimise road tax for EVs in 2021. This was followed by another unprecedented development where a PLI scheme was approved for manufacturing of Advanced Chemistry Cell (ACC), a move to reduce the prices of batteries in the country, and ultimately bringing down total cost of production of Electric Vehicles. The scheme worth Rs 26,000 crore was announced to boost the production of electric vehicles and hydrogen fuel vehicles in the country and it was estimated that the scheme will create as many as 7.5 lakh jobs for the auto sector. The collective efforts of all the stakeholders have resulted in a significant increase in the number of electric vehicles in the country. According to the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, the number of electric vehicles registered in 2018 in the country as per the e-Vahan portal was 1,31,554. The number rose to 1,61,314 in 2019. Cumulatively, as of July 2021, there were a total of 5,17,322 registered electric vehicles in the country.
Besides, India is also all ready to work on solutions and provide the world with innovative initiatives & vital alternatives. Earlier, India had joined hands with Israel’s start-up company Phinergy to set up a factory in India to manufacture aluminium-air batteries for electric vehicles and stationary applications. Lithium-ion batteries are in widespread use for electric vehicles and various gadgets globally. Finding and switching to an alternative becomes imperative because unlike Aluminium, lithium’s availability is scaringly finite on Earth. In the case of e-vehicles, aluminium-air batteries are also expected to offer a much greater range of 400 km or more per battery compared to lithium-ion batteries which currently offer a range of 150-200 kilometres per full charge. However, use of Aluminium batteries would also require the setting up of battery swapping stations as these cannot be recharged like lithium-ion batteries. The new battery swapping policy rolled out by the centre may provide solution for this problem as well.
Electronic Vehicles (EVs) are being endorsed as the future of transportation sector as the near total reliance on fossil fuels for automobiles is wringing a huge cost out of the environment. To decarbonize the transport sector, a major contributor of CO2 emissions), transition to clean mobility has become essential, which the government has already started to ensure through more and more endorsement and induction of Electric Vehicles. Electric vehicle (EV) charging stations have also expanded by two-and-a-half times across nine megacities, in the last four-five months only. Each of these 9 major cities have a population of over 4 million. As many as 1.8 lakh electric vehicles were sold in the country during this period.
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