The Indian Government is taking all the mandatory steps it can to encourage sales of electric vehicles in the country. Maharashtra is the most recent state to revise its policy, with several governments offering massive benefits to potential customers. With the recent surge in electric vehicle sales, the Maharashtra government has played this move to boost sales even further.
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Maharashtra government has unveiled a revised EV (electric vehicle) policy in a move for a cleaner environment and promote the big EV push in the country. The government aims at 10% of newly registered vehicles in its major cities to be electric ones by 2025. It also targets to have around 1,500 charging stations in Mumbai itself by 2025 along with converting 15% of MSRTC buses to electric.
Maharashtra government is also planning to have 25 % electrification of public transport in the cities such as Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur, Aurangabad, Amravati, and Nashik. The policy also states that from April 2022, all the government vehicles in Maharashtra will be electric.
The Maharashtra EV Policy 2021 will provide incentives of ₹5,000 per kilowatt-hour of battery capacity to buyers of all types of electric vehicles. The subsidy will be directly transferred to the beneficiaries within 30 days. For two-wheelers and three-wheelers, the maximum incentive has been capped at ₹10,000 and ₹30,000, respectively. Meanwhile, for four-wheelers, the maximum incentive is capped at ₹1.50 lakh. Buyers will also be eligible for early bird incentives (on purchase of vehicle before 31st December 2021) and several other benefits Also, all-electric vehicles will be exempted from road tax and registration charges, the notification stated. Additionally, Maharashtra has also rolled out scrapping incentives.
Charging Stations
In the Electric vehicle scenario, the charging infrastructure is a big drawback. It is one of the major reasons why potential buyers are not opting to buy one. Installing charging stations across the state will surely promote electrification initiatives and sales of EVs. The policy also states to aggressively develop EV charging infrastructure in the 7 major cities. 2500 charging stations to be installed at Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur, Aurangabad, Nashik, Amravati, Solapur, and 4 major highways which are Mumbai to Pune, Mumbai to Nashik, Mumbai to Nagpur, and Pune to Nashik.
The 15,000 units of slow chargers will get incentives up to ₹10,000 and 500 units of the fast charger will get incentives of about ₹5 lakhs per charger. The policy also states that urban local bodies will be encouraged to provide property tax rebates to owners for installing private charging infrastructure.
Last month, the Gujarat government had come out with the Gujarat State Electric Vehicle Policy, 2021, which it said would commence from July 1, 2021, for four years.