ISLAMABAD: After introducing an electric vehicle (EV) charging station in Islamabad, the government has decided to install EV charging stations on motorways across the country.
Addressing a ceremony in Islamabad, Federal Minister for Science and Technology Fawad Chaudhry said on Monday that the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government was working over a plan to convert public transport into electric vehicles in metropolitan cities of Pakistan.
He was speaking at the ceremony to sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the Ministry of Science and Technology with a British company, EGV Limited, to build electric buses in the country.
The minister said that EGV was Europe’s largest bus manufacturing company and they will be assembling electric buses in Pakistan, adding that this is the second agreement the government has signed with a foreign company for the manufacturing of electric buses.
In the first phase, buses will run in these three cities of the country, Lahore, Karachi, and Islamabad.
Furthermore, 40 per cent of all public transport buses will be shifted to electric vehicles within the next ten years.
Criticising the former provincial government of Punjab over Orange Line Metro Train (OLMT) project, Chaudhry said, “Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government had spent Rs60 billion on Orange Line project and the present government has to give an annual subsidy of Rs12 billion for the project.”
In the next two to three years, the entire motorway network will shift to electric vehicle charging, said the Federal Minister for Science.
