India Govt. approves green licence plates for e-vehicles

e-vehicle number plate

India government has approved green licence plates bearing numbers in white fonts for private e-vehicles and yellow for taxis to promote electric vehicles in India.

Union Minister Nitin Gadkari said on Wednesday that the government also plans to allow youth in the age bracket of 16-18 years to drive electric scooters, besides mandating taxi aggregators to have a certain percentage of e-vehicle fleet.

The purpose behind distinctive number plates is their easy identification for preferential treatment in parking, free entry in congested zones besides other proposed benefits like concessional toll, PTI reported.

Sops for e-vehicles

The measure is aimed at promoting e-vehicle’s use and the government is considering exemption from permits for such vehicles.

The minister said exemption from permit will be a game changer as restricted permit regime is a major concern. E-rickshaw growth is attributable to the permit exemption and there is scope to extend the exemption to the e-buses, e-taxis, e-autos and e-bikes. E-auto and e-buses may have a big impact since getting a new permit is extremely difficult.

“The government is also contemplating to ask taxi aggregators to have an incremental share of electric vehicles from 2020 onwards, which could be 1 percent of the fleet every year,”  Gadkari said.

Similarly, public transport operators may also be mandated to provide 1 percent incremental fleet from 2020 onwards.

Besides, Ministry of Road Transport and Highways will request the Finance Ministry that the rate of depreciation on EVs may be allowed at 50 percent as against the rate of 15 percent for conventional vehicles.

The proposals include bringing down the GST on batteries to 12 percent at par with the GST on EVs.

India at present has nearly 1.5 lakh electric vehicles and it is projected to grow to about 5 percent of the total vehicles in the next five years.

Of the about 24 million vehicles sold in India in 2017-18, electric vehicles accounted for barely about 1 percent.