BENGALURU: The government is working on an electric highway between New Delhi and Mumbai at a cost of about Rs 1 lakh crore and has already awarded 60% of the contract for that, Nitin Gadkari, union minister for road transport and highways, said.
“It will be a 1,300 km, 12-lane green highway, and our target is to complete it before January 26, 2024,” he said on the sidelines of an event organised by TVS Motors to mark its entry into the electric scooter segment.
The highway will pass through the economically backward areas of Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Maharashtra, which will help the Centre save Rs 16,000 crore on land acquisition. Gadkari had said in Parliament in July that his ministry, in collaboration with the heavy industries department, will pilot a 10-km electric highway along the Delhi-Mumbai expressway. The infrastructure included overhead cables and substations for the trial run.
Since 2016, there have been three demonstration projects of electric highways globally, including a trial run on the A5 motor highway outside Frankfurt in May. “We are thinking of making it an e-highway and are discussing with companies who have the technology in Germany, USA, Sweden for electric doubledecker bus and electric truck,” he Gadkari said.
Gadkari said the government is mulling more measures to encourage electric vehicles, including a policy to have charging stations for buses and cars on highways near petrol stations. TVS’s scooter, iQube, is priced at Rs 1.15 lakh (on road Bengaluru). Chairman Venu Srinivasan said the scooter has been built completely in-house.