Hope for action on old vehicles scrappage policy soon: Pisharody

The automobile industry was hopeful the government will introduce a comprehensive scrappage policy in the Budget, says Ravi Pisharody, ED-Commercial Vehicles, Tata Motors in an interview to CNBC-TV18.  He, however, expects an announcement to that effect soon.

Pisharody is disappointed there was no mention of electric vehicles in the Budget but disagreed on the argument that government is promoting hybrid vehicles at the cost of electric vehicles.

He reiterated that the company is working on 5 electric platforms despite uncertainty on their economic viability.Below is the verbatim transcript of the interview of Ravi Pisharody with CNBC-TV18's Farah Bookvala VhoraA: In terms of expectation for commercial vehicle we were not expecting any major announcement from a direct taxation standpoint. So, excise duty or import duties and all, nothing much was expected and nothing has happened. So, to an extent there are probably two areas but I am still hopeful that one of the areas is going to happen, the minister has been promising us a policy on getting or replacing old dated vehicles even as the government is tightening up norms for environment for new vehicles. We have lot of assurance from the government, even today I believe there is a report which says that the draft policy is getting ready. I personally did not expect it in the Budget but some people felt that there could have been something there. However it is a more complex thing.The areas which could have been a little more is the outlay for electric. Last year also the expectation was belied. This year also to give you an example we are supplying 25 busses to BKC MMRDA. This is driven by the state and the government is getting funding. The world over the initial entry of electric depends on subsidy from the state or the government and with the sort of outlays which are now earmarked I am not seeing a big push coming yet. There is lot of interest, in our auto expo we displayed electric. We are working in five platforms despite these uncertainties. So, I am still hopeful that will happen but in the Budget we did expect a bigger outlay on electric.Q: Do you think that the government focus has shifted from electric to hybrid in the short term because this is something that we are picking up from other players as well, they feel a little betrayed because the government's initial stand was that electric is the way to go but in the interim hybrid vehicles they been given the lion share of attention and that is one of the points that has been raised. Does this resonate with your own personal view?A: This is something which at least some of us have been telling the government. When you talk electric you must include hybrid electric as the part of the programme because pure electric will be requiring much more initial costs and lot of charging points. In hybrid there is regenerative charging so you don't need to keep charging every 40-50 kilometres. Particularly for busses I think hybrid is the way to go. Having said that we are developing fully electric busses. However I don\\'t think there is anything wrong with the government move to club electric and hybrid electric in sort of one coverage.