Delhi, Maharashtra, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh have the most comprehensive electric vehicle policies with the widest range of parameters including budget allocation, charging infrastructure and job creation, a new study shows.
The study Climate Trends, Analysis of State Electric Vehicle Policies and Their Impacts, assessed the comprehensiveness of electric vehicle policies in 26 states and federal territories based on 21 parameters. Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Himachal Pradesh, Ladakh, Kerala and Uttarakhand provided 3 to 7 of the 21 defined parameters in their policies, making them the least comprehensive, the report said.
The report said that of the 26 states and union territories that issued electric vehicle policies in the past five years, 16 of them were issued between 2020 and 2022.
The report said that none of the eight states – Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Delhi – that had issued policies before October 2020, could achieve their targets for EV penetration, charging infrastructure or investment.
The EV policy of nine states and union territories including Delhi, Odisha, Bihar, Chandigarh, Andaman and Nicobar, Maharashtra, Haryana, Rajasthan and Meghalaya has the strongest demand-side incentives, the report said.
Tamil Nadu, Haryana and Andhra Pradesh have the strongest supply-side incentives, with special support to promote electric vehicle manufacturing in addition to incentives provided by the state’s industrial policy, the report said.
According to the report, only nine states including Chandigarh, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Delhi, Maharashtra, Meghalaya and Ladakh have made charging infrastructure mandatory in new residential buildings, offices, parking lots, shopping malls and other places. Only eight states have specific targets for electrification of fleets of last-mile delivery vehicles, aggregation taxis, government vehicles, etc.: Maharashtra, Delhi, Haryana, Karnataka, Assam, Madhya Pradesh, Manipur, Andaman and Nicobar.
As of November 2022, Delhi’s electric vehicle penetration rate is 7.2%, while the target is to reach 25% by 2024. The report said that Tamil Nadu has no clear target, but the electric vehicle penetration rate is only 2.02% of registered vehicles.
Public transport electrification lags in all eight states. Tamil Nadu aims to electrify 5% of its buses, but no electric buses are yet in service. Kerala aims to have 6,000 buses by 2025, but only 56 are on the ground.
Delhi, which has the most charging stations and charging points, has achieved only 9.6% of its target of having 30,000 charging points by 2024. In all other seven states, public data shows only between 100 and 500 public and semi-public charging stations.
“With the expansion of electric vehicles seen as one of the key pillars towards faster decarbonization across the country, the success of the national EV policy is both important and necessary for India’s carbon reduction targets.
“It’s a good sign that most states in India have EV policies in place, but a successful transition to zero-emission transport depends on how effectively they are designed and implemented,” said Aarti Khosla, director of Climate Trends. “It also depends on national transport electrification targets, which do not currently exist in India. Our research shows that few national policies have a comprehensive design that balances EV sales, manufacturing and overall ecosystem growth.”
She added: “There are gaps in implementation resulting in slower impact on the ground and this needs to be addressed through better regulation, improved monitoring, mechanisms and capacity building of stakeholders across the policy value chain.”
