Saar: The green licence plates will have white fonts for private e-vehicles and yellow for taxis.

It was in January this year when the National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog proposed the introduction of green number plates for EVs in India. Well, that proposal has got a nod from the government and soon e-vehicles plying on our roads will have green number plates.

In our union minister, Nitin Gadkari’s words:

“The government has approved distinctive green licence plates for electric vehicles to encourage people to use electric vehicles. Such vehicles will be fitted with green licence plates bearing numbers in white fonts for private cars and yellow font for taxis.”

The sole purpose behind different numbers plates for e-vehicles is to make them identifiable for special perks like preference in parking spaces, free entry to congested zones among other proposals like concessional toll, Gadkari said. A formal notification is being drafted and will be released in a week’s time, he added.

Also Read: EESL To Invest Rs 2,400 Crore For 20,000 EVs By March 2019

To ensure faster adoption of e-vehicles, the central government has ideas to loop in taxi aggregators across the country. Gadkari said:

“The government is also contemplating to ask taxi aggregators to have an incremental share of electric vehicles from 2020 onwards, which could be 1 per cent of the fleet every year.”

That’s not all. Gadkari mentioned that the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways will request the finance ministry that the rate of depreciation on EVs (electric vehicles) may be allowed at 50 per cent, as against the rate of 15 per cent for vehicles with internal combustion engines. Furthermore, the proposals include slashing the GST applicable on batteries to 12 per cent at par with GST on EVs.

Motivating people to buy “greener” cars by giving above-mentioned perks and reducing the cost of EVs is surely the way forward. That said, the fate of hybrid vehicles remains unknown. Sure, they will never be as “green” as pure electric vehicles but since we don’t have a robust infrastructure in place to support the existence of all-electric vehicles as of now, hybrids should be given a fair chance to prove themselves worthy.