There should be more outlays for commercial vehicles under the yet-to-be-announced third version of the Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of (Hybrid) and Electric Vehicles schemes, according to Girish Wagh, executive director of Tata Motors Ltd.
This is because FAME-II, which had an allocation of Rs 10,000 crore, had a roughly 40% allocation specifically towards electric buses. Up until then, only buses were the segment that was electrified. Since then, the market has seen launches in the light commercial vehicle or smaller trucks in the electric powertrain segment as well.
Zero-emission transition in trucking or commercial vehicles is going through natural gas as a fuel and has started seeing penetration in CNG and LNG in heavy vehicles, Wagh told NDTV Profit in an interview.
Apart from EV buses and E-LCVs, while truck makers are transitioning heavily towards CNG and LNG for medium and heavy commercial trucks, eventually, these will be electrified as well. All of these will have to be accounted for within the new scheme.
This can be achieved either through increasing the allocation from erstwhile Rs 10,000 crore outlay or increasing the percentage allocation from 40% in FAME-II to accommodate electric smaller and larger trucks.
The government's support in terms of FAME as a demand-side incentive and PLI as a supply-side incentive has been very instrumental. FAME is supporting small commercial vehicles and buses, and the third version is expected to be out soon, he said. "I would expect an outlay for CV in FAME-3."
The company has participated in electric bus tenders from CESL and has successfully delivered almost 3,000 electric buses. With electric light commercial vehicles, they already have roughly 5,000 electric LCVs in the market under the ACE EV brand.
Despite the muted expectation for the first quarter, the industry volumes grew by 2%. This positive momentum, combined with the rural recovery, will help the automaker's sales grow, according to Wagh.
There are some green shoots in September. There is growth seen in the first few days of September as noted in the metric of number of kilometres running per day, the executive director said. "With festive and with a revival in the rural economy, the demand should pick up."
"The second half of last for commercial vehicles was a bit muted and therefore, I expect the second half to see growth. I will be happy to see the industry ending flat as compared to the previous year," he said.
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