With a growing need of electric/hybrid alternative required as means of transport nowadays, the Indian government has taken the initiative upon itself and plans to develop electric vehicle platforms.
The government recently released its future plans for Indian transportation which is supposedly going to take shape within the time-frame of 2 years. The government aims to popularize hybrid as well as electric means of transport in the country due to rising fuel prices and environmental issues. And in doing so, it has got into an agreement with all the major Indian manufacturing giants for developing a host of electric vehicle platforms ranging from two-wheelers, small cars to commercial vehicles.
The government claims to have invested nearly Rs. 1600 crores and with the help from major manufacturers, it plans to showcase the first prototype within 18 months and their commercial production should start in 24 months. Particularly for CVs, manufacturers like Tata Motors, Ashok Leyland, Mahindra and Eicher are cooperating to benefit the government with their research and development facilities, excellence and their technical know-hows so that the project can be completed as soon as possible with desired goals.
Since the government is expecting this project to be quite a success, the initial point of focus while developing hybrids and EVs is to come up with electric two-wheelers. One-fourth of the Indian automotive sale comes from this sector itself and the current electric two-wheelers are using only imported Chinese, Taiwanese and Korean parts and the objective is to use locally built parts for the same.
The other two are small cars and CVs. Foreign electric car makers do not really keep the Indian requirements while coming up with their latest vehicles and they are also quite out of reach of the general public because of their luxurious price tags. As far as CVs are concerned, it is the majorly used means of transport in our country that also exhausts a lot of government fuel resources and by developing an electric/hybrid alternative, it could result in a cleaner atmosphere along with cost benefits.
The whole project is part of the government’s FAME scheme that stands for, Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Electric and Hybrid Vehicles and a lot of effort is being put in by the centre to extend this to all parts of the nation to have a cleaner tomorrow. Yes, the electricity requirements would increase enormously but it would at least be better than exhausting the fossil fuels and pollute the environment altogether. The only thing left for us, the general public, is to wait and just hope that the government is able to set this right.
Source – AutocarPro.in
