Getting the electric vehicle policy right

Set an ambitious target, finalise the incentives, drive it from the top and avoid flip-flops in policy decisions

After announcing an audacious plan to have an all-electric vehicle mobility market by 2030, India is having second thoughts. There are four reasons it should press ahead.

* Electric vehicle-renewable energy link: India is committed to 175 gigawatts of clean energy—including 100 gigawatts of solar energy—by 2022. Union Minister of State for Power R K Singh has said that the country could even exceed that target. There will be significant amounts of zero-marginal-cost power available that could be used by cars or stored in car batteries. The storage in car batteries can also be used to balance the grid—an increasingly