Government has spent Rs 3 crore for research and development of EV battery

The government of India under its plan for adoption of electric vehicles (including hybrid vehicles) viz. the National Electric Mobility Mission Plan 2020 (NEMMP 2020), has released Rs 3.05 crores for research and development, as per Babul Supriyo, Minister of State in the Ministry of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises, in a reply to a written question in the Rajya Sabha today.

As per the reply the government has already allotted Rs 2.4 crore (committed expenditure Rs 1.5 crore) to the Non-Ferrous Materials Technology Development Centre (NFTDC), Hyderabad for the Technical Development Project for advanced Gen-IV Lead Acid Battery & Gen-Nickel-Zinc battery for EVs.

While Rs 61 lakh has been allotted to IIT, Kanpur under its ‘Proposal received under IMPRINT initiative of MoHRD for Hierarchical Nanostructure Carbon Materials Derived from Candle Soot and Graphine for High Rate & High Performance Electrodes for Automotive Batteries and Supercapacitors (Development of Rechargeable Lithium Ion Battery)'.

The NEMMP 2020, which provides a road map for facilitating the manufacture and use of electric and hybrid vehicles through a series of interventions in order to support research and development in technology including battery technology, create demand for such vehicles, and to enhance manufacturing of such vehicles significantly by the year 2020. It says that under NEMMP, the Government has set an ambitious target to achieve 6-7 million sales of hybrid and electric vehicles by 2020.

As part of the reply, the Department of Heavy Industry has notified a FAME India Scheme (Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of (Hybrid &) Electric Vehicles in India) for implementation with effect from April 1, 2015. The scheme is proposed  to  be  implemented  over  a  period  of  6  years  till  2020,  wherein it is intended to support the hybrid/electric vehicles market development and its manufacturing eco-system to achieve self-sustenance at the end of stipulated period.

At present, the Phase-I of the scheme is under implementation, which was originally planned for a period of two years till March 31, 2017 but has been extended further till March 31, 2018.The scheme is being implemented through four focus areas namely Technology Development (R&D); Pilot Project; Charging Infrastructure and Demand Creation.

Department of Heavy Industry has, however, not undertaken any specific study to assess the yearly requirement of battery capacity to meet this demand.

As per FAME India Scheme (Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of (Hybrid &) Electric Vehicles in India), specific projects received under Technology Development (R&D), including battery technology/charging infrastructure are considered and approved for funding by the Government.