Piyush Goyal bats for switching over to electric vehicles

Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], September 19 (ANI): The Union Minister of Railways and Coal, Piyush Goyal, has said that India would have to 'leapfrog into electric vehicle age.'

Speaking at the Indo-American Chamber of Commerce (IAAC) Annual Convention in Mumbai, the minister said that "it (electric vehicles) is something that's in the interest of the people of India," further asking "till when we are going to have our personal interest or corporate interest over country's interest."

Goyal's comments come days after the Union Minister of Road Transport and Highways, Nitin Gadkari, said that the carmakers producing vehicles that run on traditional fuel, need to go for an alternative source of energy.

Goyal, terming the switch over to electric vehicles as a 'game changer', urged, "We don't have to continue to be indifferent and after 30 years, when the world has already become efficient, then India wakes up and starts planning for efficiency."

The government aims to have an all-EV (Electric Vehicles) fleet on Indian roads by 2030 and has thereby, recently announced that the cabinet note on the EVs is ready.

Even as the car ownership across the country is set to grow, the vehicular pollution is on the rise in several Indian cities.

Besides pollution, cars running on traditional petrol and diesel cause huge dent into India's oil import bill, which was pegged at Rs. 4.7 lakh crore in 2016-17, that's the 3 per cent of the GDP.

The EVs, besides checking pollution, are expected to ease off the burden of oil import. (ANI)