The government approved green licence plates bearing numbers in white fonts for private e-vehicles and yellow for taxis in order to promote electric vehicles in India. India, currently, has four kinds of number plates—white licence plates with numbers of black font for private cars, yellow plates with fonts in black for commercial vehicles, black plates with yellow font letters for self-driven rental vehicles and blue plates with white font letters for embassies and High Commissions. Army vehicles, on the other hand, follow a different registration system given by the Defence Ministry, while vehicles of the President and governors have red licence plates with the national emblem.
These differences are for their easy identification for preferential treatment in parking, free entry in congested zones besides other proposed benefits like concessional toll.
Besides mandating taxi aggregators to have a certain percentage of e-vehicle fleet from 2020 onwards, the government is also contemplating permitting youth in the age group of 16-18 years to drive e-scooters, which are gearless; this will lead to a big demand for e-scooters.
India at present has 1 to 1.5 lakh electric vehicles as per an estimate and it is projected to grow to about 5 per cent of the total vehicles in the next five years. Of about 24 million vehicles sold in India in 2017-18, electric vehicles accounted for barely about 1 per cent.