In an attempt to encourage people to use electric vehicles, the Indian government has approved distinctive green colored license plates for e-vehicles. While the private e-vehicles will get white fonts, the taxis will get yellow font on the number plates. The information was revealed by Union Minister Nitin Gadkari.
Apart from making changes to the license plate color, the government also wishes to allow the youth aged between 16 and 18 to drive electric two-wheelers. It’s planning to mandate taxi aggregators to have an incremental portion of the e-vehicle fleet. A notification regarding this order will be out in a week’s time, said Gadkari.
The distinctive color of number plates would help in differentiating vehicles and would ease in the identification of e-vehicles for preferential treatment. These vehicles will get free entry in congested zones and other benefits like concessional toll, road transport.
Reportedly, the authorities are even considering permit exemptions for the e-vehicles. This could have a big impact on e-buses, e-taxis, e-autos, etc as getting a new permit is quite difficult.
Furthermore, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways is contemplating to mandate all public transport operators to provide 1% incremental fleet from 2020 onwards. These e-vehicles will bring down pollution and the government will be able to tighten the fuel efficiency norms.
Apart from this, the Transport Ministry would request the Finance Ministry to allow the rate of depreciation of e-vehicles at 50% against the 15% rate of conventional vehicles. At present, India has 1 to 1.5 Lakhs electric vehicles and the figure is projected to grow up to 5 percent of the total vehicles in the next 5 years.
Coming back to the license plates, there are currently 4 kinds of these plates including the white ones with black font for private cars, yellow ones with black font for commercial vehicles, black ones with a yellow font for self-driven rental vehicles, and blue ones with white font for vehicles for Embassies and High Commissions.
