Delivering the Interim Budget for 2019-20 today, and as part of a 10-point agenda for the next decade, finance minister Piyush Goyal also made a case for a pollution-free India, and for electric vehicles (EVs).
He said, “This India will drive on EVs with renewables to become a major source of energy supply. This will also reduce import of crude (oil).”
Commenting on the finance minister’s bullishness on EVs, Sohinder Gill, director general, Society of Manufacturers of Electric Vehicles (SMEV), said: “Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s and Finance Minister Piyush Goyal’s mission of bringing an electric vehicle revolution to India by 2030 is truly path-breaking and will surely provide much-needed impetus to the industry. The government’s focus on the use of clean energy in the transportation sector would certainly help our country tackle the issue of climate change."
"The EV industry welcomes our finance minister’s commitment towards making the country pollution-free. We hope the government would soon announce a concrete plan of action with its time-bound implementation in order to fulfil its stated vision. SMEV strongly feels that an initial high dose of incentives and actions must be taken in the next year or 2 years to relaunch the electric mobility mission that has sort of lost steam in the recent years due to flip-flop of policies,” added Gill.