India to Order Uber and Ola Cabs To Switch to Electric by 2026

Both the cab aggregators need to bring in electric cars to their fleet, starting from 2020 onwards.

Time for Ola and Uber to go electric with their fleet.

(Photo: AP)

In order to reduce traffic congestion and pollution on the roads, the Indian government is reportedly going to order Uber and Ola to gradually convert their fleet into electric. According to Reuters report on Thursday, the cab-aggregators will have to switch 40 percent of their respective fleet into electric vehicles by 2026 in the country.

Ola has given a shot at going electric in the country since last year. But Uber will have to make necessary changes to its business, as well as back-end model in India to equip itself for the transformation needed to move from fossil-fuels to relying on electricity to run its fleet.

Not to forget, this will be a huge learning curve for the company, as well as the drivers, who, up until now have resorted to either petrol/diesel or CNG as their source of powering the vehicle.

The changes come as a part of country’s long-term vision to resort to electric and other source of energy to run vehicles. For this, Uber and Ola, as mentioned by sources in the report, will be given phase-wise targets to meet the final objective.

Both the companies will have to start making changes from next year itself, in order to get 2.5 percent of its fleet on electric by 2021. In one more year after that, they’ll have to double up the count to 5 percent of the total fleet, 10 percent by 2023 and going all the way up to 40 percent in three years after that.

Drastic changes are needed to be made over the next 5 to 10 years, so that pollution levels in various parts of the country can be brought down.

The Delhi government has already started offering Bharat Stage (BSVI) graded fuel since 2018 and others will be getting them in the coming years. The capital of the country has also resorted to limiting vehicle registrations of petrol cars up to 15 years, and diesel vehicles can run on the roads legally for 10 years.

This is also being done in order for India to compete with the Chinese electric vehicle market, which is miles ahead of most countries in the world right now. High infrastructure costs and big money spent to own electric vehicles has worked against the growth of this sector in India.

But with Uber and Ola asked to come on board, and various modes of transport switching to electric, eventually thing could change for good.