Visiting Goa? Your rental car and bike may soon be electric only

Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant has announced that it will be made mandatory for all new tourist vehicles in the state registered from 1 January 2024 to be electric vehicles, Hindustan Times reported. This means that next year onwards, when you visit Goa, your rental scooter or can could be an electric model only. Further, it will be made mandatory for permit holders having multiple tourist taxis, rent-a-bike and rent-a-cab operators to retrofit 30% of the fleet to EV by June 2024.

The minister made these announcements as he spoke at the inaugural ‘Energy Transition Working Group’ meeting on enabling policies to accelerate electric mobility. Addressing the gathering at the event, he also said that going forward all government purchases of light motor vehicles will also be electric vehicles only. "New government light motor vehicles purchased from January 2024 will mandatorily be EVs," he said.

Citing the reason for this move, Sawant said that the the state’s vehicle density is 4.5 times higher than the national average, largely due to tourism. Goa is ranked 15th in the world in terms of vehicle density as more than 85 lakh tourists visit the state each year while the actual population of the state is 15 lakh.

Thus, tourist vehicles form a major part of the vehicle density and thus are a major contributor to increased carbon emissions in the state due to a large number of taxis, rental vehicles and buses that tourists use to commute. "Based on the recent study carried out by GIZ, 40% of total carbon emissions generated in Goa are due to vehicular operations," Sawant said.

Electrification of these vehicles is in line with the country's ambition of accelerating the adoption of such vehicles. “Diesel and petrol are dying technologies. And they will soon be dead, and the age of electric vehicles is inevitable soon," said Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant while speaking at the G20 Sherpa event.