EV Awareness Portal Launched By Karnataka Govt, NITI Aayog, UK government

Karnataka has launched ‘EV Jagruthi’, an awareness portal for electric vehicles that will help faster adoption and a cleaner transport sector in the southern state. The portal was inaugurated by Sunil Kumar, Karnataka Minister of Energy, and Alex Ellis, British High Commissioner to India.

It was also informed that the portal was jointly developed by the Karnataka Government, NITI Aayog and the UK Government.

The website is expected to serve as a ‘one-stop portal’ that will disseminate all relevant information regarding electric vehicle uptake among the customers. State-specific information about electric vehicles that will help the customers to switch to cleaner modes of vehicles will by offering information on Karnataka’s EV targets, incentives and initiatives.

P Rajendra Cholan, Managing Director, Bangalore Electricity Supply Company (BESCOM), said, “The EV Jagruthi portal caters to the needs and priorities of a diverse set of stakeholders, including but not limited to future electric vehicle users, early electric vehicle adopters, government, academia, the research community, industry, businesses house and consultants. The state government endeavours to continuously enhance and enrich this portal in terms of its content, coverage, design and technology on a regular basis.

Cholan added that as an accelerator of change, the portal will influence various stakeholders, including millions of state’s users, to adopt electric vehicles, drawing more investments into the electric mobility sector.

Bengaluru-Centric Report Released

The occasion was also marked by the unveiling of a report called ‘Roadmap for transformation of Bengaluru to a Global EV Lighthouse City in India.’ The report basically delves into the requirement of mobility in Bengaluru. It is followed by the city’s potential to become a Global EV Lighthouse City in India.

The report reads, “This report, thereafter, represents a short, medium and long-term phased strategy for Bengaluru to become a global EV lighthouse city in India. In parallel, it showcases the learnings from best practices of electric mobility from the United Kingdom. Finally, the report gives recommendations on accessing innovative finance, electric mobility innovation centres, EV accelerator cells, and gender and inclusion.”

The report finds that the policy interventions are expected to attract investments worth Rs 31,000 crore, create 55,000 employment and reduce more than 85 MTons amount of net CO2 emissions over the vehicles’ lifetime by 2030 for the state of Karnataka.

At present, Karnataka has third highest number of EV registrations in India following UP and Delhi. In April, 2022, the state crossed 1 lakh EV registration despite the fact that the state is not providing any subsidy on the purchase of EVs within Karnataka.