As part of its national policy, the Union government has announced that it will support Andhra Pradesh in developing infrastructure for electric vehicle (EV) charging. The Centre had recently announced phase-II of FAME (faster adoption and manufacturing of hybrid and electric vehicles) to incentivize the positioning of public charging infrastructure and increase uptake of electric vehicles in the country.
Under this, Andhra Pradesh will set up 400 charging stations in 73 locations across the state. Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam, and Tirupati will be declared model electric mobility cities with phase-wise goals to adopt electric vehicles, charging infrastructure, and new EV enabling building codes. Energy Efficiency Services Ltd (EESL) executive vice-chairman Saurabh Kumar said the EESL will extend its full support to develop EV charging infrastructure in Andhra Pradesh.
“The government of India has aimed at having electric three-wheelers operating in the country by 2023, and electric two-wheelers by 2025. A separate institution, namely Convergence Energy Services Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary company of EESL, has been established to mainly focus on e-mobility in the country,” Kumar stated.
“E-mobility would have a major impact on environmental protection and economic benefit for which we have considered Andhra Pradesh as one of the best states in the country for producing results, keeping in view APs track record,” the EESL vice-chairman added.
The EESL has already established 80 charging stations in AP and supplied 300 e-cars to various government departments. It has now asked the state government to scale up e-vehicle charging stations.
Officials of NREDCAP, the state’s nodal agency for EVs, expressed they are considering converting APSRTC’s fleet of over 11,000 buses into electric buses by 2029. The first phase of 100 percent conversion of the bus fleet in the top four cities is expected to be completed by 2024 and fossil fuel-based commercial fleet and logistics vehicles would be phased out, they added.