The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) has recommended some changes to be made to the FAME II scheme.
These changes include incentivising battery swapping stations. FICCI has said that incentives can be given to battery swapping stations just as it is being given to EV charging stations under FAME II.
The electric vehicle Industry is growing fast, but not fast enough according to the government. The government is doing everything it can to fastrack growth of the electric vehicle industry. One of the measures taken by the government is to implement FAME – Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Electric vehicles.
Under the FAME II scheme, the government has allotted Rs 10,000 crores as incentives for various categories of electric vehicles. FAME II incentivises the purchase of 10 lakh electric two-wheelers, 5 lakh erickshaws and 7,090 e-buses.
FAME II also proposes to incentivise the purchase of 35,000 electric four-wheelers costing upto Rs 15 lakh and 20,000 fullhybrid vehicles costing upto Rs 15 lakh.
FICCI put out a statement saying, the FAME II policy introduced in March 2019 was much-needed but there are some elements in the policy that could be altered for better results. FICCI is an association of business organisations in India set up way back in 1927. The industry chamber looks into various commercial and industrial operations in
India.
FICCI also claimed that it had written a letter to the Department of heavy industries, highlighting the need to include battery swapping under FAME II. The industry body was quoted as saying, “As the battery swapping services were not factored earlier in the scheme, this may also require for additional funding in the FAME II policy so as not to curtail the funding that is required for EV charging stations which would be needed for four-wheelers and buses etc.”
Thoughts On FICCI Recommends Battery Swapping To Be Included Under FAME II FAME II is a great scheme that
has been actioned by the government to accelerate the growth of the electric vehicle industry. However, as FICCI has
now recommended, it would be better if battery swapping too was included under it.
One of the greatest fears of using an electric vehicle is that the batteries would run out of juice.
Even if one manages to nd a charging station, it would take ages to charge while having to ll up petrol takes just a few minutes at the max.
Battery swapping will help greatly in this regard as the user can just drive the EV in, swap the battery and drive out, and it would take just a few minutes to do the same. This can easily work under a battery leasing scheme. FAME II supports the setting up of charging stations. It would be great if the scheme would support battery swapping in the same way.
Source: drivespark
