World EV Day: This Asian country aims for 1.13 million EVs by 2025

China is the world's largest market for electric vehicles. And by quite a margin. Other countries, however, are also firmly on the EV bandwagon with South Korea poised to become the next big hub for such vehicles. With foreign as well as local car makers increasingly looking at bringing about their EV offerings here, the country's president recently announced the aim of having 1.13 million all-electric vehicles here by 2025.

President Moon Jae-in, on the occasion of World EV Day, made the announcement through a virtual broadcast and added that the country is also looking at taking up the number of hydrogen vehicles here from 80,000 currently to 200,000 by 2025.

The government in South Korea is also cognizant of the fact that EV ambitions may not be fulfilled just by products and incentives on these. As such, the country's environment ministry is reportedly planning to have an additional 45,000 charging stations over the course of the next five years and has been highlighting the opening of thousands of jobs as electric mobility goes from strength to strength.

The push towards electric mobility is part of a larger plan to increase use of renewable energy with Moon also focusing on solar and wind power. The country plans to triple its use from these sources by 2025.

Local players are poised to reap maximum benefit of this push towards cleaner sources of energy. While Tesla has managed to carve a niche for itself here - it cornered 43% of all subsidies offered in South Korea in the first half of 2020, local reports suggested that the EV subsidy policy in place may be re-jigged in a bid to bolster home-grown companies like Hyundai.

The primary focus, however, is on how to get the mass population to adopt EVs - local or otherwise - in a bid to usher in a new age of clean mobility