Mumbai, Apr 9 (PTI) The Society of Manufacturers of
Electric Vehicles (SMEV) on Tuesday urged the project
implementation and sanctioning committee (PISC) to delink
localisation and ex-showroom prices of e-bikes from subsidy
under the FAME-II scheme.
In a letter to the committee, which is likely to
hold its first meeting in the national capital this week, the
SMEV has also recommended enhancing per KwHr subsidy to Rs
20,000 from the present Rs 18,000 in the scheme for adoption
of e-bikes, in line with the bus battery subsidy.
“SMEV requests the committee members to support e-bike
mobility by not linking localisation and ex-showroom price to
subsidy as well as keeping 60-km as range eligibility,” the
SMEV said in its letter to PISC.
“Besides, the per KwHr subsidy should be increased to
Rs 20,000, in line with the bus battery subsidy,” it said.
The government late last month laid out the
eligibility criteria, based on minimum top speed, range per
charge and acceleration as well energy consumption efficiency
for these categories of electric vehicles (EVs) to avail the
incentives under the scheme.
Besides, for availing incentives, the manufacturer
would have to have minimum 50 per cent local content in the
vehicle.
With the aim to promote eco-friendly vehicles, the
government in 2015 launched FAME India scheme.
The second phase of the scheme, which has come into
effect for a period of three years starting April 1 this year
with an outlay of Rs 10,000 crore, covers electric buses,
passenger vehicles as well as three-wheelers and two-wheelers.
An inter-ministerial empowered committee headed by
heavy industry ministry’s secretary has been set up for
overall monitoring, sanctioning and implementation of the
scheme.
Stating that component suppliers are not ready to
invest with the current extreme low volumes of vehicles, the
SMEV said localisation involves designing the components,
prototyping, component-level testing, reliability check,
safety checks, vehicle-level testing, certification and
ramp-up.
This process takes anywhere between one to five-year
period and cannot be shortened, it said in the letter.
“The scheme is addressing the wrong end of the problem
by linking incentives to localisation. Additional supply side
incentive/motivation may result more favourably,” it said.
Pointing out that a 20 per cent cap on ex-showroom
price will adversely affect prices of the “affordable segment”
bikes, it said this cap can be kept for premium-end bikes to
stop misuse of subsidy.
Affordable segment is the backbone of the industry to
provide a substantial growth in number, which is evident in
FAME-1, it added.
Observing that keeping the 8-km range for battery
“unnecessarily” adds more batteries that are not required by
90 per cent of the users, the SMEV said more batteries would
mean much higher replacement cost and that will be a big
deterrent to the prospective buyers.
It recommended a range of 60-km, saying it would be
more than enough.
As per the industry body, the FAME-I had a subsidy of
Rs 22,000, which helped adoption of e- bikes gradually to the
growth path.
SMEV had requested an increase of around Rs 10,000 in
the subsidy for one year to offer these city speed Li-battery
e-bikes at prices similar to the petrol ones. That would have
led to an exponential growth, it said.
“Surprisingly the Fame-II subsidy has been reduced to
Rs 12,000-18,000 for 90 per cent of the city speed e-bikes as
the subsidy is now linked to the battery capacity rather than
the efficiency of the e-bike,” it added.
The proposed subsidy of Rs 10,000/KwHr is “grossly
inadequate” and will be a waste rather than the incentive, it
said.
Strangely, the subsidy on batteries for buses is Rs
20,000/KwHr in spite of the lower per KwHr cost of the bus
batteries as compared to that of the e-bikes, it added. (PTI)
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