pune union minister of heavy industries mahendranath pandey on friday said that the centre was trying to increase indias capacity of manufacturing lithiumion batteries and promoting the use of evehicles evs our target is to fulfil the need of batteries for our auto industries by indigenous manufacturing after selfreliance on batteries we aim to export them numerous initiatives such as subsidies for manufacturers have been taken up it is yielding good results and production has been boosted he saidpandey was speaking at an event organised by pune mahangar parivahan mahamandal limited pmpml in the city around 90 ebuses were added to its fleet and a fifth depot for ebuses was inaugurated at the event the union ministry had urged the automotive research association of india arai to develop technology to reduce charging time for evs with a project being carried out for the same now pandey also said the expense on batteries can be reduced if they are locally produced faster adoption and manufacturing of hybrid and ev fame schemes have been introduced to promote evs maharashtra chief minister eaknath shinde who attended the programme virtually said that public transport should be promoted in the pune metropolitan region development authority pmrda area which has expanded hugely in recent years deputy cm devendra fadnavis said promotion of nonconventional fuel is on the agenda of the state government for which pune will be a flagbearer as per pmpml data out of its 2000 buses nearly 600 have been converted into ebuses