Companies making electrical two-wheelers, by their affiliation Society of Manufacturers of Electric Vehicles (SMEV), have taken on the Department of Heavy Industries (DHI), saying they didn’t get subsidies for even half the mandated 1 million items they manufactured.
Subsidies are given beneath Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Hybrid and Electric Vehicles 2 (FAME II).
In a petition to the parliamentary standing committee on trade vitality and estimates, the SMEV mentioned the division had performed an “accounting error” by exhibiting that it (the division) was near attaining the mandated goal by together with gross sales of the EVs that had been “not funded” beneath the scheme.
The SMEV in its petition mentioned subsidies of as a lot as Rs 1,400 crore had been handed on to prospects over the previous 15 months from the producers’ personal pocket and it appeared “the OEMs have change into financiers to the federal government’s prized FAME II scheme”.
The affiliation mentioned electrical two-wheeler gross sales between April 2019 and 2023 had been proven to be 960,000.
But 450,000 of those haven’t acquired subsidies.
This, they mentioned, means solely 500,000 had been funded beneath FAME 2, which implies that they’ve achieved half the goal as was mandated in FAME II.
The SMEV, which has firms like Hero Electric and Okinawa amongst its members, has been at loggerheads with the division after the latter determined to withhold subsidies until it (the division) completes an audit of whether or not the corporations have met their localisation norms of fifty per cent, crucial for being eligible for subsidies.
This was after a criticism from a whistle-blower.
Firms like Hero Electric and Okinawa have been beneath audit for some time.
The division has instructed those that have abided by the localisation guidelines that their subsidies will probably be put in abeyance till they embrace the price of their chargers and software program within the manufacturing facility value, which was capped at Rs 1.5 lakh for subsidy, and never promote it individually to keep away from the cap.
Ola and Ather Energy have diminished the value of the mannequin in addition to included the value of the charger within the manufacturing facility value of 1.5 lakh.
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