10 Jan 2024
The Centre is planning to develop 6,000 km of e-highways by 2030. These include the Golden Quadrilateral, the North and South, and East and West Corridors.
In 2023, only 83,000 units of electric vehicles (EVs) sold against the target of 100,000 due to inadequate charging infrastructure and concerns regarding the range of the vehicles.
To reverse this scenario, the central government plans to power the longest Indian highways with green energy charging infrastructure. These include the Golden Quadrilateral, connecting Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai; the North and South Corridor running from Srinagar to Kanyakumari; and the East and West Corridor connecting Silchar (Assam) and Porbandar (Gujarat). The longest e-highway operational in Berlin, Germany, runs 109 km.
The government plans to replace the old 800,000 diesel buses with electric buses by 2030, under the Vision 2030: PM Public Transport Sewa. It will reduce logistics costs, pollution levels, and carbon emissions per the COP28 guidelines. The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways will award this project to private companies on the Build, Operate, and Transfer (BOT) model.