AP Govt plans to introduce 1 lakh electric vehicles in 2 years

Amaravati: The 2018 will be the year of electric vehicles in Andhra Pradesh, said Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, while speaking at a meeting on Electrical Vehicles &Infrastructure with EESL, NEDCAP and other companies held at the Secretariat on Friday.

In the coming two years, we are planning of introducing 1 lakh electric vehicles in our state, explained Chandrababu Naidu. He said, “Our implementations should become a model of replication for other states. We must try to come up with innovations and look towards creating cost effective solutions in the energy sector.”

The meeting was attended by officials from Micromax, PWC, Deloitte, Mahindra, Kinetic Green and start-ups working on electrical vehicles and charging systems.

Briefing the company executives on the vision of AP in the electric vehicles industry, Ajay Jain, principal secretary to government said, “As we are a power surplus state, we want to go for higher consumption as well as output. We are targeting to add 18,000 MW energy by 2022 and soon we will be self sufficient in renewable energy.”

Expressing optimism over the future of electric energy in AP, Chandrababu Naidu said, “This is a historical meeting and I am sure our collaboration will yield great results. I started power sector reforms in 1995 which was unprecedented and became a landmark reform in the history of our state.”

He said that we must try to increase power consumption and simultaneously, we must also aim to create good storage capacity and grid management. 

The officials also discussed various methods to encourage the manufacturing and sales of electric vehicles in the state. The Chief Minister assured the executives of all the companies that the Government will provide necessary assistance to their companies.

At present there are 30 lakh electric vehicles in the world and by 2020, this number is expected to go up to 90 lakh and will touch 4 crores by 2025, the delegates informed.

Sourabh Kumar, MD, Energy Efficiency Service Limited (EESL) informed that they are right on schedule with their pilot project which aims to roll out 300 electric vehicles soon in AP. The EESL will be coming out with 10,000 electric vehicles very soon as per their recent agreement with the government of AP.