Electric Cable Highway B/W Delhi - Jaipur Will Reduce Travel Time To Two Hours: Gadkari

Minister for Road Transport & Highways, Nitin Gadkari said that the true meaning of Aatma Nirbhar Bharat is India needs to increase its exports and reduce its imports.

In BW Auto 40 under 40 awards, Gadkari emphasised that the three most important pillars of our society are ethics, economy, ecology and environment.

Regarding ecology and environment, Gadkari said, “In the Paris Accord, PM Modi has pledged that he wants to make India a carbon-neutral country.”  Gadkari also pointed out that when he took charge as the minister, the size of the industry was 7.5 lakh crore, but now the size of the industry is 12.5 lakh crore.

Gadkari said that just three months ago, India has surpassed Japan to become the country with the highest number of automobiles in the country. “Our dream is to make the Indian Automobile industry the number one in the world. All reputed automobile brands in the world are present in the country,” Gadkari added.

Gadkari praised the startups for their contribution to supporting India to make it a carbon-neutral nation soon. He also discussed about two important philosophies.

He said, “One theory is knowledge to wealth, the innovation, entrepreneurship, science, technology, research skill and successful practices, we name it as knowledge and conversion of knowledge into wealth is the future. The other important theory is the conversion of waste into wealth. And these two things are related to the automobile industry.”

Adding further he highlighted the concept of circular economy and said, “Now, the finance minister has already declared the circulation economy. So from the waste tyre, that rubber powder we are using in road construction, adding 15 per cent rubber powder in bitumen. Everywhere the car scrapping policy has started, we can get aluminium, copper, rubber and plastic, if and by which we can do recycling of it and make components by which we can reduce the cost of the final product by at least 25 to 30 per cent. So we will be more competitive in the international market.

The Minister of Road Transport and Highways stated, “The young talented engineers are doing an excellent job who have just passed from IIT. We are working already on lithium-ion batteries at the same time aluminium ion, iron ion, zinc ion and sodium ion research is going on.”

He also mentioned that when the discussions on electric vehicles started, the lithium-ion batteries cost USD 150 per kilowatt per hour. But now the cost is coming to USD 115 per kilowatt per hour. He added, “I am confident within one year, it is going to come to USD 100 then the price of petrol vehicle, diesel vehicle and electric vehicle will be the same and I feel that there is a huge growth potential.”

The Minister of Road Transport and Highways has also declared that an electric cable highway is going to be built between Delhi and Jaipur which will reduce the time of travel between the two locations to just two hours.

“We have just decided to start making an electric cable highway and our first project is from Delhi to Jaipur on Express Highway where the time taken to travel from Delhi to Jaipur will be only two hours. With the electric trolley bus, three buses will be there and we will run those buses with electric cable. There will be facilities similar to the aviation sector like food, air hostess and everything. Similarly, the cost of Delhi to Jaipur will be 30 per cent less than the cost of diesel engines.”

The transport minister said the government is going to start ten projects on ropeway cable funicular. Also, the government is planning for Sky bus and has already received 200 projects for ropeway cablecar funicular railway.

The minister said, “The idea is in a double-decker bus we can take 200 or 250 people from one point to another point. And, that will be a mass rapid transport based on electricity, which is going to resolve the traffic jam problem in the cities like Bangalore.”

The minister also highlighted the achievements of the ethanol blending programme and said, “We are making ethanol from sugarcane juice, B molasses, C molasses, corn, raw straw and rice.”

Gadkari also quoted the example of the Numaligarh refinery of Assam which is transporting petrol and diesel to Bangladesh. The refinery is also making bioethanol from bamboo. He added that by adding bioethanol to the petrol the cost of petrol transported to Bangladesh will come by 20 per cent, thereby benefitting the agricultural economy.

He also mentioned the success of the pilot project of Panipat where a plant produced one lakh litre of bioethanol per day from Pareli (rice straw) and will create 150 tonnes of bio bitumen and yearly 76,000 tonnes of bio aviation fuel, which is sustainable aviation fuel. He also said that in the Davos there was an important discussion to add 5 per cent bio aviation fuel in the petroleum fuel.

“In Bangalore, we have successfully implemented the project adding 20 per cent methanol in diesel and Karnataka state corporation has successfully implemented this project. Ashok Leyland has developed a truck on 100 per cent methanol. We have ample stock available of low-quality coal in India through which we can make methanol, then dimethyl ether (DME). We can add up to 40 per cent in LPG and we will reduce the price of the gas cylinder. At the same time, we can make ammonium nitrate and urea from that by coal gasification.”

The minister also suggested adding methanol in trucks since the rate of Methanol is Rs. 22 per litre whereas a litre of diesel costs Rs. 110 per litre.

The road, transport and highways minister also pointed out the challenges faced in the transportation of Hydrogen and how they are trying to make hydrogen cost-effective stating, “We can make hydrogen from water from biomass. But the problem is that by electrolyser process the cost is coming at least USD 5 per kg. We have a lot of technology by which we can get hydrogen with USD one per kg. We need to develop the storage system transport system and particularly distribution centres for Hydrogen.”