Electric Vehicles: Niti Aayog To Introduce Battery Swapping Policy Within 3-4 Months

Niti Aayog is set to come up with a battery swapping policy for electric vehicles (EVs) in the next three-four months, The Economic Times reports.

The policy will bring about business models like the battery as a service (BaaS), leasing, etc to ensure that EV owners do not necessarily have to own a battery as such.

Batteries make up around 50 per cent of the total vehicle cost. The aforementioned policies will cut down the upfront cost for EVs.

It will provide the EV owners flexibility to swap their batteries at specific stations within a few minutes.

They could then charge batteries at their home itself.

“I am confident that electric vehicles will be cheaper than ICE engine vehicles in the near future,” Niti Aayog CEO and senior bureaucrat Amitabh Kant was quoted in a report by ET.

He explained that the initial phase of the policy will be concerned with catering to the light EVs. It is comparatively easier to plug and play batteries from the vehicles to the battery swapping stations in these kinds of EVs.

The overall strategy aims to create new avenues of investments in innovative business models like BaaS to subsequently prepare a level-playing field for all battery service providers.