By 2030, India wants 30% of private automobiles, 70% of commercial vehicles, 40% of buses and 80% of two- and three-wheelers to be electric. But way before that, India is likely to get the world’s longest EV roadway by the end of 2022 or early 2023.
Currently, the world’s largest EV highway, which is 109-km long, is located in Germany’s Berlin.
India’s Agra-Delhi-Jaipur 500-km highway, named Atal Harit Vidyut Rashtriya Mahamarg (AHVRM), is currently under construction and is likely to be renamed during inauguration.
The project was intended to be announced during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Jewar airport foundation stone-laying event last year. But was deferred owing to lack of progress amid lockdowns.
With two years until the next general election, the central government is now considering completing the project by the end of 2022 or early 2023.
Abhijeet Sinha, project director of National Highway for Electric Vehicles (NHEV), reportedly shared key details.
He said: “To start with, we will have 100 electric cars and 25 electric buses on both the highways. Cars with a chauffeur, too, will be available for hire. This will be the world’s longest electric vehicle highway.”
Sinha also noted that there will be a total of 12 charging stations, two of which will be solar-powered.
Sinha stated that under this project, the Yamuna Expressway (over two-hour journey) and the Delhi-Jaipur Highway, NH8 (over four-hour journey) will be fully transformed to allow EVs to travel.
Any electric vehicle, whether personal or taxi, will be monitored 24 hours a day on the E-way, and in case of breakdown, assistance will be offered within 45 minutes without causing any inconvenience, he further noted.
The highway charging stations will be lucrative and the investment’s break-even threshold will be reached in 36 months. He stated that this will be the most profitable electric mobility initiative.
In December 2020, trials were done on Yamuna as well as the Delhi-Jaipur expressway and two basic charging stations are already functioning in Gurugram, where two prototype stations have been set up.
Additionally, two such stations are also being built in Noida, but they have been deferred owing to the elections. These would be equipped with 100 chargers capable of charging 1,000 automobiles in 24 hours.
According to the NHEV website: “Agra-Delhi-Jaipur will be the first 500-km EV corridor programmed and operated by Advance Services for Social and Administrative Reforms (ASSAR) to bring ease of doing business on the 12 corridors marked by the power ministry.”
Vehicles, chargers, civil, electric infrastructure, fleet, and station utilities are all involved in the Annuity Hybrid E-Mobility (AHEM) model, with a single CAPEX spend from public sector undertakings (PSUs) and banks. NHEV would be able to convert any NH into an E-highway in 90 days, with a maximum waiting time of 30 minutes for a breakdown EV, it stated.
The website states: “With NHEV, India will be the first country to get Anti-Theft System (ATS) for EV fleets.”
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