Kerala is fast catching up with the rest of the country in registration of electric vehicles. Kerala now has a total number of 48,055 e-vehicles on the roads though it’s much less compared to neighbouring states Tamil Nadu and Karnataka which have 1,50,179 and 1,09,272 e-vehicles respectively.
As per the latest data presented by Minister of Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari in the Parliament recently, of the 48,055 e-vehicles in Kerala, 5746 were cars and 38,019 were two-wheelers. “There is a growing demand for electric vehicles in Kerala but it’s slow paced. There are many reasons for it. Over 50 per cent of the geography of the state is hilly and people living in these regions are not confident of buying electric vehicles. Whereas in cities like Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode, people are buying electric vehicles, mainly two-wheelers for their daily commute,” said a senior official of Kerala Motor Vehicles Department (MVD).
As per the data, Kerala has now 50 electric heavy passenger vehicles (bus) which are mainly used by Kerala State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC). The data also shows that there are only 192 electric charging stations in Kerala while there were 698 in Karnataka and 439 in Tamil Nadu.
Meanwhile, Kerala government is doing all it can to promote the state as an electric vehicle production hub in the country and has been heavily investing in the state PSU – Kerala Automobiles Limited (KAL), which recently launched an e-cart designed to be used for waste disposal. The e-karts are ideal for waste collection for urban and rural local bodies and it runs on locally manufactured batteries. The state government aims to make use of the e-cart for waste collection in local bodies in the state.
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