National mission on battery storage to boost local production of electric vehicles, says association

Mumbai: The setting up of the National Mission on Transformative Mobility and Battery Storage will encourage local manufacturing of batteries for electric vehicles (EVs), an industry body said Thursday. Terming the Cabinet’s approval to the plan a “good move,” the Society of Manufacturers of Electric Vehicles (SMEV) also said that it would help in significantly reducing the cost of EVs. Earlier in the day, the Union Cabinet at its meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, approved the setting up of the Mission to drive clean, connected, shared and sustainable mobility initiatives in the country. “If introduced and implemented successfully, it should make India self-reliant on the most important element of EVs and also help significantly bring down the cost of the vehicles,” said Sohinder Gill, director general, SMEV. [caption id=“attachment_4214861” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational image. Reuters.[/caption] According to Gill, given government thrust on e-mobility, it can become a lucrative business proposition in near future. “All it needs is a leap of faith by some business houses to quickly invest in an integrated plant to produce global quality batteries, without waiting for the threshold volumes of EVs to kick-in,” he added. The FAME 2 policy lays very stringent criteria of indigenisation for subsidies and lithium-batteries made in India could be a significant step to reach those levels quickly, Gill said. SMEV fully supports the government’s decision and look forward to the final scheme, he said. The Cabinet last month approved a Rs 10,000 crore initiative under the Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Electric Vehicles II (FAME II) scheme, marking a significant push for hybrid and electric vehicles in the country. The FAME 2 scheme will be executed over three years starting from 1 April. FAME 2 is the enhanced version of the existing FAME India I scheme, which was introduced in April, 2015 and included a total of investment of Rs 895 crore.