87% Indians would buy electric vehicles if that reduced pollution: survey

About 87 per cent of Indian drivers and vehicle owners would buy an electric vehicle (EV), if that helped reduce air pollution, according to a new survey.

Only 12 per cent would switch to EVs to avoid using petrol and diesel, according to the survey commissioned by Climate Trends, a Bengaluru-based nonprofit, which polled more than 2,000 Indian drivers, owners and those who planned to buy a car. In 2017, India sold about 900,000 EVs, 4 per cent of the volume of diesel and petrol vehicles sold.

Transportation accounts for about 11 per cent of India’s carbon emissions and is a major source for air pollution in several cities nationwide. As many as 14 of the world’s top 20 most-polluted cities are in India, according to a 2018 World Health Organization (WHO) report.

The findings of the Climate Trends survey were launched on September 6, 2018, a day before the start of a two-day long conference organised by NITI Aayog, the central government’s think-tank. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was expected to launch a policy on ‘Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Hybrid and Electric vehicles’ (FAME-II), much-anticipated policy for the Indian EV industry. The first phase, FAME-I, was released in 2015.