[kozhissery]

Saw this in today's The Hindu

Unlimited term for electric vehicles

Principal Secretary of Transport K.R. Jyothilal has said the State will limit the registration period for motor vehicles to 10 years, but will offer an unlimited term for electric vehicles as part of promoting the green mobility initiative.
All motor vehicles in the State will have to switch over to electric, compressed natural gas or liquefied natural gas within five years to achieve the e-mobility mode.
Charging stations would be made mandatory in all fuel outlets in the State through legislation, Mr. Jyothilal said while addressing the Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board’s (PNGRB) road show for promoting the 10th City Gas Distribution (CGD) bidding round here on Tuesday.

Ref: https://www.thehindu.com/news/nation...le26066951.ece

Mods: Searched the forum but could not find any links. Please do remove if this is duplicate.

[Aditya_Bhp]

Originally Posted by kozhissery

All motor vehicles in the State will have to switch over to electric, compressed natural gas or liquefied natural gas within five years to achieve the e-mobility mode.

All these are dreams. As far as I know, there isn't a single active charging station in Kerala other than the one in CIAL. CNG is still limited to 4 pumps in one district.
Also, there are no proper electric vehicles in India, atleast with a range of over 200kms.

The public transport system is a mayhem. Trains running 5 to 6 hours late. The KSRTC Volvo buses have gone missing from the roads and rest of the regular buses are delayed and are crowded.

Without a proper public transport system, all these proposals will remain a dream.

[2cents]

Originally Posted by Aditya_Bhp

The public transport system is a mayhem. Trains running 5 to 6 hours late. The KSRTC Volvo buses have gone missing from the roads and rest of the regular buses are delayed and are crowded.

Without a proper public transport system, all these proposals will remain a dream.

They will easily achieve all that through 'legislation'.

Wonder if such rules be applicable to government vehicles and state run transport corporation buses too??!! They do not have insurance, for sure, and hardly the money to pay salaries and pension.

[rakesh_r]

What a joke, a state which is yet to switch over to underground cabling systems and still cant provide uninterrupted stable(the overhead cable snaps in a jiffy, stabilizers are still a necessity) 24x7 power is talking about electric cars.
The state still depends on hydroelectric power and borrows power from the national grid at insane rates. The genius who came up with this proposal must be lauded with top honors.

I really appreciate the intention of promoting electric cars, but without developing the Infrastructure and burdening the common man is utter foolishness.

[Guna]

Why can't they understand that 11 year old vehicle which confirms to the emission norms doesn't pollute nay more than a 9 year old vehicle. All they need to do is to strengthen the emission checks.
Another perspective: By scrapping 10 year old cars, they are prompting people to buy new cars. New car production has to be increased to compensate for this, which itself will contribute much more to the carbon foot-print than keeping the older cars operational.

[avira_tk]

This was said at some auction to supply piped gas, basically just to keep the audience thrilled. This man has no clue about the real world outside his government quarters and of course his official vehicle will be paid for by the taxpayers.

How does this genius plan to compensate the loss of revenue from lower taxes on EVs? I'm sure that'll happen with higher electricity prices. During the monsoon, in addition to having no electricity, we'll end up with no transport. The French protests are over policies like this, made by unaccountable bureacrats who don't have to bear the higher costs.

[Santoshbhat]

10 years is too short esp for private vehicle owners who use their cars sparingly and maintain their cars well. For example someone who runs less than 5,000 kms a year, in 10 years the car would have done only 50,000 kms. To ask him to scrap this car and buy a new one just for the sake of the environment is absurd, even if that new vehicle is a zero emission (from tail pipe only) electric car.

Building a new car consumes energy and there is an environmental cost to it. A car is a sum of so many parts, produced by so many factories, transported up and down from source to destination. I am sure there is a break even point of sorts. The damage caused to the environment in building a car is like sunk cost. A car that is scrapped before it runs xxx kms is terrible for the environment.

[vb-saan]

The intention maybe good, but for a state which is so slow on infrastructure developments, the decision and agreement itself will easily take 5+ years. I guess this was just a ‘speech’ to hook the audience present at the meeting/event.

[SmartCat]

Looks like this Principal Secretary is just blabbering.

Oil companies and stakeholders should exploit the opportunity arising out of the switch over. Even they should look for tapping hydrogen as a fuel for vehicles. The standard for vehicles should be made stringent, he said.

I see many counts of should be, would be and will be in that article.

[supremeBaleno]

No one is against CNG, e-vehicles etc, but to think that overnight everyone will move to these after scrapping cars is a pipedream. Especially when the govt is struggling to provide the current requirement of electricity itself for homes/offices. Someone was just letting his imagination run riot.

[lurker]

this is one problem with IAS officers they are expert at 'nothing' but give opinions on everything.

All pvt cars are registered for 15 years. If govt brings out any legislation to the contrary they will be challenged in court for violation of a contract (registration if vehicle is a contract between a state and a citizen) and the state will have to duly compensate the pvt owner for 5 years of loss in utility. Now for a bankrupt state like Kerala, making lumpsum compensations to all manner of vehicle owners is possible only in imagination.

Actually not even in imagination.

[anjan_c2007]

The bureaucrats making such statements are living in a fool's paradise. The power to decide the life of a motor vehicle vests only with the Central Government. This decision by the Kerala Govt if ever made, can surely come under scrutiny.

Section 59 of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988

59. Power to fix the age limit of motor vehicle. –
(1) The Central Government may, having regard to the public safety, convenience and objects of this Act, by notification in the Official Gazette, specify the life of a motor vehicle reckoned from the date of its manufacture, after the expiry of which the motor vehicle shall not be deemed to comply with the requirements of this Act and the Rules made thereunder :
Provided that the Central Government may specify different ages for different classes or different types of motor vehicles.
(2) Notwithstanding anything contained in sub-section (1), the Central Government may, having regard to the purpose of a motor vehicle, such as, display or use for the purposes of a demonstration in any exhibition, use for the purposes of technical research or taking part in a vintage car rally, by notification in the Official Gazette, exempt, by a general or special order, subject to such conditions as may be specified in such notification, any class or type of motor vehicle from the operation of sub-section (1) for the purpose to be stated in the notification.
(3) Notwithstanding anything contained in section 56, no prescribed authority or authorized testing station shall grant a certificate of fitness to a motor vehicle in contravention of the provisions of any notification issued under sub-section (1).
Corresponding Law. – This is a new provision in the 1988 Act.
Objects and Reasons. – Clause 59 seeks to empower the Central Government to specify the life of motor vehicle of any class or type beyond which the vehicle have to be kept-off the roads. It also confers upon the Central Government the power to exempt from the provisions of this clause vintage cars.

And last of all, vintage cars (50 years or older according to the government) are here to stay forever !

[SaiSW]

Originally Posted by kozhissery

Principal Secretary of Transport K.R. Jyothilal has said the State will limit the registration period for motor vehicles to 10 years, but will offer an unlimited term for electric vehicles as part of promoting the green mobility initiative.
All motor vehicles in the State will have to switch over to electric, compressed natural gas or liquefied natural gas within five years to achieve the e-mobility mode.
Charging stations would be made mandatory in all fuel outlets in the State through legislation

There were talks, globally, about manned missions to Mars and extensive space exploration by the next century, all of which seems more plausible than this.

After bleeding people with high road taxes now they want to deprive them of their cars for the sake of some sorry excuse of a "green plan".

The second part is even more funny they can't even properly maintain a system for filling up air in tyres and some (albeit becoming a minority now, thankfully) have difficulties getting their debit card readers to work properly. And now we are to expect them to handle several lacs worth of car charging equipment with utmost care.

This government has been facing a pretty rough patch for the past two or so months, so maybe something like this for headlines would do them good, but other than that, I'm not holding my breath for anything.

[locusjag]

Isn't there a Bob Marley song (sung in the Creole dialect) with this line?

- "I'm-ah smoke-ah the Ganja till I go blind.."

This e-vehicle proposal is blind to many realities and it flows just like Marley's Ganja induced natural mystic flows through the air. With no mention of the lack of infrastructure for charging points or even basic underground power supply lines -

1) In India as a whole, it's what, 76% of power production by burning coal? It's smoke through the power plant's chimneys instead of through exhaust pipes. And good luck setting up nuclear power plant projects!

2) Kerala has a power deficit. The extent and severity varies with time and the year, but it's always there.

3) Lithium batteries. Ah. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Lithium scarce? From 2010 to 2017, the bulk price of mined Lithium has jumped 270% to $14,000 per metric tonne.

4) What's this I'm also hearing about scarcity of Cobalt which is also impacting manufacturing of Lithium ion batteries?

5) There is no other viable battery technology available to power vehicles. This is the best we have. And this option doesn't allow for economies of scale, with all its underlying scarcities.

So, before I press on any further - let's respectfully let this beaten and bloodied ring fighter face Bob Marley as he delivers the knockout punch with:

"There's a natural mystic
Blowing through the air
If you listen carefully now you will hear
This could be the first trumpet
Might as well be the last
Many more will have to suffer
Many more will have to die
Don't ask me why
Things are not the way they used to be
I won't tell no lie
One and all got to face reality now"

[longhorn]

Such pea brained hep talk was exclusive to leaders just outside the national capital region whose fortunes revolved around an animal that gives us milk. Did this guy actually come out from one of India's premier institutes? Unlimited term for electric vehicles. So it doesn't matter if the brakes don't work or if the vehicle is about to fall apart due to rusting. As long as its an electric vehicle, you are good to go.