Centre withdraws further incentive to cos tasked with setting up of EV charging infra

New Delhi: Considering the 'sluggish progress' in setting up public charging stations for electric vehicles and 'poor uptake' of subsidy for such projects, the government has decided to withdraw 'any further incentive' to entities earlier allotted such stations.

Instead, of the remaining Rs 850 crores subsidy under FAME II, Rs 800 crores would be spent on subsidising upstream infrastructure and charging equipment for electric buses bought under a Central scheme and to aid oil marketing companies (OMCs) in setting up 22,000 charging stations at their retail outlets (ROs).

Balance Rs 50 crores would be used for setting up charging stations by any other central public sector enterprises (CPSEs), a committee headed by Tarun Kapoor (Advisor to the Prime Minister) decided last August.

OMCs are being given the support as the Committee felt that roll out of chargers at ROs would give greater push to EV eco-system expansion as customers who visit them for fuelling their vehicles would be encouraged to switch over to EVs.

And also, because OMCs are better equipped with the required land and workforce to speedily implement the charging stations, said the Committee.

The other advantage would be that OMCs would not charge excessive service fee because the upstream power is available to them at a concessional rate.

A group under the Central Electricity Authority would be set up to fix the ceiling limit for the service fee to be charged from EV consumers, the committee decided.

FAME or Faster Adoption & Manufacturing of Hybrid and Electric Vehicles is a Central government scheme to boost the development of EVs. Rs 1,000 crores was allocated in April 2019 under phase II to provide as subsidy for installing EV charging

infrastructure.

Though the Department of Heavy Industries sanctioned 2,877 charging stations to 20 government entities in 2020 covering 68 cities across 25 states/UTs with a completion timeline of 18 months, there has been "meagre progress".

It further sanctioned 1,576 stations across 9 expressways and 16 highways, but their implementation had not commenced until end-August.

As of mid-July 2022, a total of 532 charging stations had been installed with 479 under FAME-I and 53 under FAME-II while OMCs had established 3,448 stations at their ROs.

The main reason for "meagre progress" under FAME II, said the Kapoor Committee, was the "higher cost of upstream power infrastructure that is making the entire business unviable due to low utilisation during the

initial period".