Delhi Electric Vehicles Policy 2020
Vehicular pollution accounts for 22-26% of the overall air pollution in Delhi. The Government of NCT of Delhi designed its Electric Vehicles (EV) policy with the vision to reduce air pollution and improve Delhi's air quality by facilitating the inclusion of electric vehicles across all modes of transport. The motivation to announce this ambitious EV Policy was to strike at the heart of vehicular pollution.
In 2018, the Dialogue and Development Commission of Delhi (DDC) played a crucial role in the formulation of the Draft Delhi EV policy, which was then put up for public comment by the Department of Transport, GNCTD. In December 2018, DDC conducted a day-long national stakeholder consultation in collaboration with the Rocky Mountain Institute, which saw participation from the entire EV industry, and academic and civil society on various segments of the ambitious draft Delhi EV Policy. The consultations were held in 4 one-hour sessions on charging infrastructure, two-wheelers, three-wheelers, and the citizen's roundtable. DDC then incorporated the suggestions into the final Delhi Electric Vehicles Policy that was notified by the Transport Department in August 2020.
Key Unique Features Of Delhi's EV Policy
There are 5 key features of Delhi's Electric Vehicles Policy which make it the first of its kind in India:
- Incentives: Delhi was the first state to design evidence-informed (based on the total cost of ownership) financial incentives such as waiver of road tax and registration fee, scrapping incentives, purchase incentives, etc. that have been followed by other states.
- Charging Infrastructure: Delhi facilitated the creation of a wide network of public and private charging points, battery swapping stations through low EV tariffs, a single-window facility for setting up charging stations & giving birth to a unique PPP model for installing EV public charging stations that made EV charging available to end users at the lowest cost in the world at ₹2 per unit i.e. USD 3 cents per unit.
- Financing: On the financing front, Delhi has set up a broad, non-lapsable EV fund for the implementation of the Policy using the feebate model of taxing polluting vehicles to fund the incentives for EVs.
- Management and Operations: A state EV cell was set up for institutionalising the management and day-to-day implementation of the EV Policy.
- Public Participation: Through State EV Cell and Delhi EV Forum, stakeholders from the industry, civil society, government bodies, think tanks, academic institutions and the like have been included in the policy formulation and implementation design processes
DDC has been a frontrunner in supporting the Transport Department in drafting the EV Policy, implementing its provisions with full vigour, continuing dialogue with the stakeholders, designing its mass media and outreach campaigns and developing a wide network of EV charging infrastructure in Delhi.
Targets
- The Delhi EV Policy has set calculated but ambitious targets for EV penetration in Delhi.
- The key targets under the Policy are:
- Accelerated EV penetration across all vehicle segments so that 25% of all new vehicle registrations are EVs by 2024
- 70% of the public transport bus fleet is EV by 2025
- Induction of 8000 pure electric buses by 2025 • 100% of delivery service fleet to be electric by 2025
- 100% of all Delhi government official leet to be electric by 2023
Progress So Far
Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the Delhi Government is on track to achieve the ambitious target of 25% share of EVs in new vehicles by 2024. From a baseline of 1.2% in 2019-20, the share of EVs in Delhi has risen sharply to 12.5% in March 2022 as against the all-India average of 4%, making Delhi the leading state in India in EV penetration. In the first two years of its implementation, Delhi EV Policy has also led to the installation of over 2500 EV charging points in the cap
