Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday announced that the government will bring a battery swapping policy to boost use of electric vehicles in the country in view of space constraints for setting up charging stations.
“Considering the constraint space in urban areas for setting up (electric vehicles) charging stations, a battery swapping policy will be brought out and interoperability standards will be formulated,” Sitharaman said in her Budget speech in the Lok Sabha.
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 EV (electric vehicle) ecosystem.
“We will promote a shift to use public transport in urban areas. This will be complemented by clean tech and governance solutions, special mobility zones with zero fossil fuel policy and EV vehicles,” she stated.
The policy will facilitate 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 for charging their vehicles at charging stations especially in cities. Moreover, there is space constrain for setting up new charging stations in urban areas also.
Pawan Goyal, director, JRG Automotive, said that the government’s proposal to introduce a battery swapping policy with interoperability standards for electric vehicles (EVs) will benefit the entire ecosystem of the EV business, particularly the electric two-wheeler and three-wheeler segments. “The regulation will hasten the development of battery swapping stations, where EV owners may recharge their vehicles by exchanging out depleted batteries for fully charged ones. It will ease range anxiety and charging time, which are two of the most common concerns among potential electric vehicle purchasers,” Goyal said.
