FAME 2.0 in a new avatar: Industry veterans deliberate its impact

The government has made some major revisions in Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of electric vehicles (EVs) or the FAME scheme. These revisions will see higher subsidies for two-wheelers. Naveen Munjal, Managing Director of Hero Electric, and Nagesh Basavanhalli, MD and Group CEO of Greaves Cotton, shared their views.

“It will certainly help the buyer. The pricing at this point in time has come down substantially. Also, the lifting up the cap of the ex-dealer price will certainly help the market catapult this industry further,” said Munjal.

“This is a very welcome move and it reduces the initial price. Customers had two-three points – one was the overall industry awareness which is improving; the second was the initial price- I think we will continue to see price parity and the unit economics clearly plays out; the last part is the range anxiety, which I think technology can solve,” Basavanhalli added.

In terms of the initial price difference, Basavanhalli further mentioned, “You will see a price vehicle 15,000 per kilowatt-hour to increase from 10,000 per kilowatt-hour. So clearly the prices of the vehicles do go down.”

A charging structure is getting installed across the country. “We have already installed about 1,600 charging stations. The idea is for customers to not have range anxiety issues. The other factor, which we are doing as a company is training roadside mechanics. We have already trained about 6,000 of them. We are creating this whole ecosystem. It is still a start, there is a lot to do,” Munjal explained.

Hero Electric has got a five-year plan, which estimates that 20 percent of the total market could be electric. “That 20 percent means about 4 million units by 2026. We are seeing extremely robust growth in this sector in the next couple of years,” Munjal stated.