The upcoming budget is a hopeful one for electric vehicle (EV) manufacturers. This time, they hope that the Union government would be able to deliver on its promise of spending Rs 20,000 crore in two years, as announced by Jaitley in the Union Budget 2017.
Though Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is amiss from this year's budget actions, electric vehicle manufacturers made their representations to the finance ministry for consideration in the budget. Prime among those is the government promise to roll out EVs in the 10 most polluted cities.
"We expect the budget to allocate at least 20,000 crore for the next two years and target at least one million EVs in top 10 most polluted cities. FAME 2 must be announced with a six-year plan and time-bound implementation," said Sohinder Gill, director general SMEV and CEO, Hero Electric.
“Electric mobility needs stable and long term policy support, concentrated dose of customer incentives and massive awareness campaign to reach the government's target of 30 per cent EVs by 2030," said Gill. The SMEV has sought a notional green cess on all IC engine vehicles, and create a corpus to do so, rather than dipping into the exchequer.
Earlier, Modi government's Faster Adoption and Manufacture of (Hybrid) and Electric Vehicles (FAME) scheme, which had envisioned to do so, has failed to popularise electric vehicles. The government also brought in amendments to the Motor Vehicles Act in 2017 to include registration rules for electric vehicles.
The National Electric Mobility Scheme, which was widened in scope and re-christened FAME, has so far not delivered on the promise of having charging points and other infrastructure in place for the sale of electric vehicles to thrive.
A critical missing component for electric vehicles in India is the availability of powertrain components. An anchor to the success story of electric vehicles would also be the availability of lithium-ion battery technology to be made available in the country.
So far, arrays of lead-acid batteries are used by electric vehicle manufacturers as their power source. The ministry of heavy industries under Anant Geete oversees both the FAME scheme as well as the government initiatives to develop lithium-ion batteries in the country.
"BHEL (Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd) and Libcoin are in advanced stages of finalising talks to set up an indigenous lithium-ion battery production unit in Bengaluru or any convenient BHEL unit," said Anant Geete, Union minister for heavy industries, to THE WEEK.
India currently imports 10 per cent of its lithium-ion battery requirements and has no technology based on usage of these batteries so far. While the goals of FAME scheme remains unfulfilled after two years, the industry has been demanding rollout of a better FAME-2 scheme.
The new scheme included electric vehicles in a big way for last mile connectivity in most polluted cities as well as for smart cities. But the government is still keen to continue with the earlier scheme, despite requests from the industry.
In a notification earlier this month, the heavy industries ministry has extended the earlier scheme till March 2019. This will prolong the original two-year scheme to four years. Officials at the ministry said that the government is keen to be 'patient' with the scheme and not write it off completely with a new scheme yet.
Though procrastinated for a while, the demand for electric vehicles is only seen to be growing. More so, with major vehicle manufacturers preparing their own arsenal of electric vehicle launches. The two Indian automobile majors, Mahindra, and Tata Motors, are already offering electric vehicle variants for some of their existing production cars.
Last heard, Maruti Suzuki India Ltd was also readying five new electric vehicles to suit buyers of different needs. The development of these vehicles is still a hush-hush word, but the company promises some big rollouts in a year or so.
"All I can tell you is that this is a big focus for the company," said Puneet Dhawan, deputy general manager at MSIL.
In Delhi, on Monday, Bajaj Motors managing director Rajiv Bajaj also gave a glimpse of his company's electric vehicles vision. "We are developing new offerings in the EV range and they are being perfected at our facilities," said Bajaj, in Delhi, at the launch of a new campaign of Bajaj Motors.
Rajiv Bajaj at the launch of a new campaign of Bajaj Motors in Delhi | Aayush Goel
"There are certain uncertainties when you are dealing with any new technology. But I can tell you that we are exploring electric options in both three-wheel and four-wheel formats also," said Bajaj, responding to queries on the company's electric vehicle plans.
Gill's Hero Electric which has reported a Rs 1,000-crore profit already, too, feels that further boost is needed to fulfil the government's promise. "Encouraging PPP Model in EV sharing services is a must. The government should set up a framework to encourage PPP model in services like bike and car sharing through which the required infrastructure support can be created," he said.
