Delhi govt to ask ride-hailing, food delivery firms to completely switch to EVs

In a bid to reduce emissions from vehicles, the Delhi government will ask cab aggregators, e-commerce companies and food delivery services to completely switch to electric vehicles. Aggregators such as Zomato, Swiggy, Ola, Uber and the likes will be asked to completely switch to EVs as these services account for 30 per cent of the registered vehicles in the city.

Vehicular emissions account for around 38 per cent of the city's air pollution. The government will also direct petrol pumps to not give fuel to vehicles that do not have a valid pollution-under-control (PUC) certificate in another major step to reduce the city's air pollution levels. These directives that come under the Environment (Protection) Act are expected to be issued this week.

A senior transport department official told PTI that the directive to switch to EVs will be done in phased manner and the department will come up with draft guidelines for the same. As per the city's Electric Vehicle policy, total EV sales share should reach 25 per cent by 2024.

Out of the established e-commerce services, only Flipkart and Fedex have established worldwide targets for converting their last-mile delivery fleets to electric vehicles by 2030 and 2040 respectively. DHL has set a 60 per cent electrification target for its fleet.

Additionally, in order to reduce pollution, the Delhi government will deregister all diesel vehicles that are over 10 years on January 1, 2022, and issue a no objection certificate (NOC) so that they can be re-registered in other places, in compliance with the National Green Tribunal's directions. However, the transport department will not issue an NOC for diesel vehicles which have completed 15 years or more on the date of applying for it.

Delhi is the most-polluted capital city in the world and is also one of the fastest expanding cities in terms of population, as per the findings of Swiss air technology company, IQAir.

(with inputs from PTI)