No proposal to extend FAME scheme after March 2024: Govt

Electric vehicles

There is currently no proposal to extend the Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Electric Vehicles (FAME) after March 2024, CNBC-TV18 reported quoting government sources.

The FAME Scheme was launched by the Centre in 2011 as part of the National Mission on Electric Mobility.

The Society of Manufacturers of Electric Vehicles (SMEV) wants the FAME Scheme to be extended by three to four years along with the inclusion of light to heavy commercial vehicles in it to promote electric mobility.

In its pre-Budget recommendations for the year, SMEV had said: “The validity of FAME II is set to expire on March 31, 2024. We believe FAME's validity needs to be extended since we have yet to meet the penetration the subsidy was supposed to catalyse.”

It had added: “The new Rs 10,000 crore FAME II scheme, which was launched in 2019, should be linked to e-mobility conversion rather than being time-based.”

The Parliamentary Panel on Industry, too, had recommended an extension of the scheme for electric vehicles’ adoption by two years. The committee recommended that the government should extend the FAME-II scheme “to allow more time to evaluate the effectiveness of the scheme and to make necessary adjustments/modifications to promote EVs.” However, the Government of India is reportedly not considering it at the moment.

The news comes at a time a report jointly prepared by the KPMG and CII has suggested that EV adoption levels in India is expected to see exponential growth for the rest of the decade.

The exponential growth in the adoption level of EVs was foreseen on the back of developing infrastructure coupled with government incentives and the launch of new EV models.

“The removal of government support would result in a price escalation of EVs significantly. The committee finds that a large number of start-ups are also involved in this field, which may have to shut down once the FAME II is closed,” the Committee on Estimates (2022-23) on ‘Evaluation of Electric Vehicle Policy’ pertaining to the ministry of heavy industries (MHI) had said in its report that was presented in Lok Sabha on March 24.