The government of India recently unveiled a new electric vehicle (EV) incentive program designed to spur consumer adoption of the technology, according to recent reports.
The program — dubbed FAME (Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Electric vehicles) — will offer a variety of different incentives for those looking to purchase different types of electric vehicles.
This “variety” of different vehicles includes scooters, motorcycles, cars, buses, light commercial vehicles, and others — all of which will have access to some form of subsidization or other. Incentives of up to 29,000 rupees ($457) will be on offer for new electric scooters + motorcycles, and subsidies of up to 138,000 rupees ($2,177) will be available for new electric cars.
To give some idea of what this program will mean in India, it’s worth considering the true current price of popular new EVs over there now — the Mahindra e20, for example, currently costs about 571,000 rupees ($8,910). So the new incentives can potentially lower the cost of purchase for those interested quite substantially — by over 15%.
Given what a substantial cost-cutter these new incentives look to be, I think that we can safely expect to see a bit of a spike in electric vehicle (this includes scooters and motorcycles) sales in the country following implementation.
How much of a spike of course remains to be seen, but I’d guess that it will end up being fairly substantial — after all, you can never really predict how long such incentives will remain in place (especially in a place like India), so you may as well take advantage of them while you can.
Image Credit: Mahindra
I only see (2) charging stations in the entire country on PlugShare.