Heavy Industries Minister HD Kumaraswamy said on Wednesday that the government will take “some more time” to finalise the third phase of the ‘Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of (Hybrid and) Electric Vehicle’ (FAME) scheme.

Kumaraswamy said on the sidelines of the National Conference on Electric Mobility, organised by industry body Assocham, in New Delhi that an inter-ministerial group is working on the inputs received for the scheme, and efforts are on to plug gaps in the first two phases of the scheme, and this could take a couple of months.

“It will take some more time... several suggestions are coming because in FAME-I, FAME-II whatever lacunae is there, how to separate it, for that we are working. Even the PMO has given some suggestions and for that our inter-ministerial group is working... I think within one month, two months, it will be cleared,” Kumaraswamy said.

On Tuesday, G20 Sherpa Amitabh Kant also said that the government will introduce the FAME-III scheme to sustain the EV transition and to expand charging infrastructure nationwide.

Delivering a special address as a Guest of Honour at the Assocham conference, Tarun Kapoor, Advisor to Prime Minister, PMO said, “The electric vehicle sector is one where India has an opportunity to be a global leader. Transport sector as a whole contributed 13 per cent of total CO2 emissions of which road transport sectors share 90 per cent, we must therefore take a holistic look at the transport sector as a whole in our efforts to tackle our environmental issues....The government looks forward to suggestions from the stakeholders and will continue to extend support to the sector.”

“In FAME-III new vehicle segments should also be there because someday they will also be on the roads and they have to be equally clean...we also thought that probably it was time we focus on the enabling infrastructure more. So while FAME-II was exclusively focussed on the demand part, now we think that the enabling infrastructure/ charging infrastructure can be taken care of,” Sudhendu Jyoti Sinha, Project Director (Infrastructure/ e-Mobility) at Niti Aayog also said.

The FAME-III scheme will replace the temporary Electric Mobility Promotion Scheme (EMPS) 2024, which was launched in March this year with an outlay of ₹500 crore and validity until July 31; it was subsequently extended until September 30 with a total outlay of ₹778 crore.

However, unlike the FAME-II scheme, subsidy under EMPS was limited to electric two- and three-wheelers.

FAME-II was rolled out in 2019 with an initial outlay of ₹10,000 crore for three years. It was extended up to March 2024 with an additional outlay of ₹1,500 crore. The scheme initially intended to support 10-lakh electric two-wheelers, five-lakh electric three-wheelers, 55,000 passenger cars, and 7,000 electric buses.

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