e-AMRIT Portal: Electric Mobility in India
The global road transportation sector is a significant contributor to emissions of both long‐lived greenhouse gases and short‐lived climate forcers, including aerosols and precursors of ozone. Short‐lived climate forcers affect air quality, human health, atmospheric oxidation capacity, and climate change. The health impacts are immense but unevenly distributed, both geographically and among various segments of the transportation sector, such as light-duty and heavy-duty vehicles, shipping, and off-road machinery.
In recent years, India has undertaken a number of initiatives to accelerate the country's decarbonization of transportation and adoption of electric mobility. Schemes like FAME (Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Hybrid and EV) and PLI (Production-linked Incentive) are significant in developing an ecosystem for the early adoption of electric vehicles (EVs).
NITI Aayog, Government of India jointly with the UK Government has taken an initiative ‘e-AMRIT (Accelerated e-Mobility Revolution for India's Transportation) Portal’ which is an attempt in the direction to create awareness about electric mobility in India. The portal will serve as a one-stop destination to provide information related to the adoption of electric vehicles, their benefits, myths surrounding their use, and details of financing options, thereby helping them move towards a cleaner, greener, economical choice. This will persuade a wide range of stakeholders, including millions of users, to adopt electric vehicles, resulting in increased investment in the industry.
The e-AMRIT portal will provide insights on the key initiatives of central and state Governments by which users can set up the electric vehicle or associated enterprise. Users can also assess the benefits of electric vehicles with uniquely designed tools on the portal to calculate the savings with electric vehicles compared to petrol/ diesel vehicles, information about the Indian electric vehicle market and industry, and the key developments driving the e-mobility ecosystem forward.
The portal has a number of interactive and user-friendly features that provide detailed information related to going electric (benefits of electric vehicles, busting common electric vehicle myths, types of electric vehicles, financing options, insurance options, and electric vehicle incentives), e-mobility businesses (business models, manufacturers, service providers, and new e-mobility businesses), tools (choosing an electric vehicle, home charging calculator, public charging calculator, and journey cost calculator), charging stations map, and resources (national-level policy, state-level policies, electricity cost for charging, standards and specifications, reports and articles, media, useful links, skill centre, and international best practices on policies).
In addition, there is also a help section on the portal with answers to frequently asked questions about the e-AMRIT portal, electric vehicles, electric vehicle charging, business, savings and incentives, and safety. Stakeholders can share relevant content for the website to help the portal grow the gateway to make it more inclusive, comprehensive, diverse, and valuable, allowing information to be used to transition towards cleaner and greener modes of transportation and drive the effort forward.
Subodh Kumar