Assessing Electric Vehicle (EV) Readiness of an Indian City: A Case Study of Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh

Accelerated urbanisation due to rising population has led to increasing growth of conventional internal combustion engine (ICE) mode of transport, making it a major contributor to the global carbon emissions. Road transport accounts for similar to 74% of transport-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (IEA, 2020). India's nationally determined commitments could be accelerated by switching to electric vehicles. Several states have approved their specific electric vehicle (EV) policies which vary viz-a-viz policy interventions. At this stage, cities need to brace themselves for acting as a lighthouse of EV adoption. Lucknow, being the capital of the state as well as having been identified as one of the model EV city under Uttar Pradesh (UP) EV policy, has been selected as the study area for this study. As per vahan dashboard, a total of 25,77,750 vehicles were registered in Lucknow till March 2022 out of which only 34,704 were EVs. This shows low penetration of EVs, approximately 1.35% of total vehicles registered in Lucknow. A mix methodological approach has been used to assess EV readiness in terms of availability of EV infrastructure, policy interventions and penetration of EVs in the study area. A set of 15 indicators were framed based on secondary research and these indicators included criterion from planning, policy, technological and infrastructure interventions, comprising of qualitative and quantitative data. Each indicator was given equal scoring and benchmarking was done based on the best-performing city within Indian context. A Google form-based pilot survey was conducted for the stakeholders [end-users, Think Tanks, State/city government officials, Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs)] to assess the importance of factors involved in EV readiness.