The Ministry of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises on Tuesday said it will soon convene a stakeholder meeting to discuss ways to fast-track growth of the automobile industry, including e-vehicles.

Speaking at an event, Prakash Javadekar, Minister of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises, said that with the development of the National Automotive Test Tracks (NATRAX) facility in Indore, domestic vehicles will no longer need to be sent abroad for testing.

“We will arrange a stakeholder dialogue very soon to think about both the topics, further acceleration for high growth of the automobile industry and what is the way forward for fast tracking and fast growth of e-vehicles,” he said while inaugurating the NATRAX facility.

‘Fifth largest in the world’

“Now, since this facility has come up, many countries that do not have this kind of facility will send their vehicles to India instead of Europe or the US. The 11.3-km high-speed track at Indore is the largest in Asia and the fifth largest in the world, it is better equipped than facilities in China or Japan,” he said.

Javadekar added that many ideas were floating around on e-vehicles and there were newer solutions coming up, and that all this would be discussed at the meeting with the stakeholders.

NATRAX is being built under the National Automotive Testing and R&D Infrastructure Project (NATRiP) of the Heavy Industries Ministry. It is one of the automotive testing and certification centres in India.

The track will carry out development and homologation tests for all kinds of vehicles including maximum speed of 375 km/hr, apart from a wide variety of tests that can be done including maximum speed/brake performance, constant fuel consumption, emission tests, high-speed handling and durability testing.

Further, the track can be used for testing high-end cars and for racing too.

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