With a nearly five-fold increase in the registration of electric vehicles (EV) between 2018 and 2021, Karnataka is one among the top three States in the country in EV registrations.
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According to the report, ‘Roadmap for transformation of Bengaluru to a Global EV Lighthouse City in India’ prepared by the UK Government, NITI Aayog, and the Government of Karnataka, in 2018, the total number of EV registrations in the State was 3,806, while in November 2021, it was 22,264. The report provides projections and guidelines to transform Bengaluru into a ‘Global EV Lighthouse City’.
While Karnataka has a higher level of adoption to EV in the country, an Excel-based tool, which was developed for the EV penetration analysis of Bengaluru, showed that electric two and three-wheeler vehicles will lead the EV adoption in Bengaluru by 2030. “Electric vehicle sales penetration in Bengaluru will reach 30% for private cars, 70% for commercial vehicles, 40% for buses and 80% for two and three-wheelers by 2030. Contrastingly, the penetration of electric buses and electric private vehicles (PV), i.e., electric four-wheelers, will increase at a slower rate as compared to other electric vehicle segments,” the report says.
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As the number of EVs increases, the need for charging points is also bound to increase. The projection in the report shows that by 2030, the city would need at least 58,416 charging points to cater to the demand, which also means that the energy demand would go up to 11.73 gigawatt hours by then.
But the report says that Bengaluru has several factors to help make it one of the ‘Global EV Lighthouse Cities,’ the most important of which being a conducive EV and energy storage policy of the State. It further lists a thriving technology industry with 40% of the country’s IT industries, over 45 EV innovation startups from the city and an organised, deep network of logistics and service providers as other key factors.
Other challenges
Along with these strengths, the report also identifies challenges for an electric mobility transformation in the city. The need for more battery charging and swapping stations, more data about e-mobility, a lot of skill development and most importantly, lack of awareness are the major challenges. The report suggests short, medium and long-term activities to tackle these challenges for better EV transformation.