New Delhi: The Centre will introduce the new policy for battery swapping to encourage the use of electric vehicles and achieve its broader decarbonisation goals. The Central government will come out with a battery-swapping policy, which will develop special mobility zones for electric vehicles (Evs), disclosed Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her Budget speech.
"To promote a shift to the use of public transport in urban areas, special mobility zones with zero fossil fuel policy will be introduced. Considering space constraints in urban areas, a battery swapping policy will be brought in," she announced.
Meanwhile, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Tuesday that her budget for 2022/2023 will lay the foundation for economic growth through public investment. The government has projected growth at 8% to 8.5% compared with an estimated 9.2% for the current fiscal year and a 6.6% contraction the previous year.
She stated that the private sector will be encouraged to set up sustainable business models for battery or energy service and this will improve efficiency in electric vehicle ecosystem. "We will promote a shift to use public transport in urban areas. This will be complemented by cleantech and governance solutions, special mobility zones with zero fossil fuel policy and EV vehicles," she stated.
The policy will facilitate a faster rollout of battery swapping centres where EV owners would be able to refuel their EV by replacing exhausted batteries with charged ones. This will also save time taken in charging the embedded batteries in EVs. At present, a few such options are available in the country and EV owners have to spend hours charging their vehicles at charging stations especially in cities.
