Dedicated corridors for e-trucks

The government is exploring a plan to reserve one lane in each national highway for the exclusive use of electric trucks. These trucks won’t be battery operated but powered by electricity from overhead cables on a dedicated lane. To start with, the MoRTH is planning a pilot project for running 50-tonne electric trucks between Delhi and Mumbai, aimed at halving the cost of transportation between the two cities. Any such project will help reduce both pollution and import dependency for fuels. This comes against the backdrop of ambitious government plans for a mass scale shift to electric vehicles by 2030 so that all vehicles on Indian roads by then — both personal and commercial — are powered by electricity.