In its plan to use electric vehicles to cut down on vehicular emissions, the state transport corporation of Jammu and Kashmir missed out one crucial component of EV use. While the department was able to procure 20 electric buses from Tata Motors two months ago, the e-buses have are yet to be put into operation. Reason? There are no charging points for these.
To be used for commute within Srinagar, the 20 buses are yet to have the corresponding infrastructure installed to being their use. As per a state transport department¡¯s source quoted by ET Auto, the charging points have also been procured by the department but have not been installed to date.
For this, the department has now approached the Electricity department as the installation of these chargers requires electric transformers. While this can surely be a possible hindrance and a time consuming process, one question certainly pops up in our heads, did the department not know of this before?
(Representative Image: BCCL)
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In fact, the report states that the electric buses were also transported to Srinagar over a distance of 300 km by installing special mobile charging points along the Jammu-Srinagar National highway.
The hilarious predicament here points out to one concrete issue with India¡¯s EV dreams - the lack of EV infrastructure. With the government¡¯s constant push towards the electrification of the country¡¯s transport, both in the personal and public sector, the EVs are bound to grow. But in order to sustain this rapid growth, the government will also have to come up with EV charging stations at an equal pace. In some cases, the energy demands from these stations will also have to be met through more infrastructure, like ¡®transformers¡¯ in this case.
Jammu & Kashmir has been embracing electric buses at a rapid rate. The state transport department procured its first batch of 10 electric buses back in April, to be run in Jammu. More such?buses followed and their trial runs were kickstarted in May for Vaishno Devi pilgrims. The plan is to have a total of 40 e-buses and set their operations before opting for more in the future.?