India’s Minister of State for Energy Piyush Goyal boldly promised this week to make 2030 the year in which “not a single petrol or diesel car should be sold in the country.”
The ambition is in line with, though somewhat more modest than, the target Goyal put forward a year ago, when he called on his nation of 1.3 billion people to “become the first country of its size which will run 100% of electric vehicles” by 2030. EVs currently account for about 1.3% of the country’s auto sales.
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Goyal now “believes that with just two to three years of government assistance, India’s electric vehicle industry will be able to stand on its own two feet and provide competitively-priced electric vehicles,” RenewEconomy reports.
The report is hazy on the specifics of Goyal’s policy initiatives, but said they include “a no-money-down electric car purchasing program that lets consumers repay the loans from their fossil-fuel savings.” Funding, it states, will come from an existing Indian government commitment to “invest $2.5 billion by 2020 to spur demand for electric vehicles” through subsidized purchases, research, and expanded charging infrastructure.
The government said it expects the subsidy would be offset by $11 billion in fuel savings.
