Electric Autos not Popular in Bangalore

Bangalore City Environment

Auto drivers should change their existing autos for either diesel four-stroke vehicles, or a Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) model, of finally, electric autos, or e-autos.

By Aiswarya Sriram

Bangalore, Jan. 24, 2019

E-autos are not hitting the road even after their launch in 2017. The reason is that auto drivers are not ready to shift. K. Raja, an auto-driver at Shantinagara says, “We scrapped two-stroke autos and bought four-stroke autos, this works fine for us, why should we buy anything else?”

Two-stroke autos have old engines and are causing more pollution, hence the auto drivers were told by the transport department to buy either four-stroke autos or autos which run on LPG, or E-autos. Two-stroke auto engines make a lot of noise compared to four-stroke autos, said K. Raja.

Basalingaya, an auto driverat Mysore Road metro station says, “E-autos are costlier than four-stroke and two-stroke autos (which run on petrol). Government is not giving us the required amount of subsidy. So we are not changing our autos.”

A normal auto costs 1.75Lakhs, while an E-auto, which runs on battery, costs 2.25 Lakhs.

Nagarajan, another auto driver at Mysore Road says, “My two-stroke auto is running nicely, I will scrap it only if there is any problem with it.”

The Energy and Resource Institute released a research paper in April 2018, which states the amount of pollution caused by autos in Bangalore. In a day, the autos plying in Bangalore emit 1,200 tons of carbon dioxide, which amounts to 0.44 million tons per year. The paper indicates that E-autos would be best solution to decrease this pollution. The other harmful gases, which the autos emit, include nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter of 10 micrometers.

[/media-credit] Omkareshwari, Joint Transport Commissioner of Environment and E-governance.

Omkareshwari, Joint Transport Commissioner, Environment and E-governance of Karnataka Transport Department said, “It’s not like auto drivers are not willing to buy E-autos. Auto-rickshaw scrap policy was announced in 2017, according to which auto-drivers were told to scrap their old two-stroke autos and buy either four-stroke, LPG autos, or e-Autos.

For that, a subsidy of Rupees 30,000 was announced. The auto drivers demanded a subsidy of Rupees 50,000. The finance department didn’t agree to this demand for increase, so we couldn’t do anything, and the auto drivers are not scrapping their autos.”

 

 

Tagged