KOLKATA: The city took a definitive ‘green’ turn in 2022, with as many as 837 battery-powered vehicles being registered throughout the year – the most in the last five years, and a more-than-four-times jump over the previous calendar year – even as considerably fewer diesel vehicles, compared to pre-pandemic years, were registered.
While polluting fuels still far outnumber diesel vehicles, the push towards green fuel was encouraging, felt experts.
The Public Vehicles Department (PVD) reported a sharp rise in the registration of battery-operated electric vehicles throughout 2022, mostly in the personal vehicle category. There were 837 such registrations throughout the year, up from 196 in 2021, 21 in 2019 and just 10 in 2018.
Over the same period, 2,931 diesel vehicles – among the most polluting – were registered, again in the personal vehicle category, down from 4,498 in 2019 and 6,415 in 2018.
“The sharp rise in electric vehicles, despite an absence of a robust network of charging infrastructure, shows people have embraced the future fuel option well,” said a senior transport department officer. “A good charging infrastructure across the length and breadth of the city would have taken registrations to another level altogether,” he added.
In fact, the data released by the PVD show an increasing shift towards cleaner fuels, such as CNG (compressed natural gas), petrol/CNG and petrol/hybrids. The city registered 20 CNG vehicles, even though CNG refuelling stations are insignificant and CNG is brought to the city on caskets, not through a pipeline. A number of people were going for hybrids because of the absence of charging infrastructure, said sources.
The push towards electric vehicles, many experts felt, was an economic, rather than an environmentally conscious decision. Whatever it is, it is great news for the city’s air.