The second phase of the Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Electric (& Hybrid) vehicles (FAME II) went live in April last year. For three years, the central government allotted a total of Rs 10,000 crore for several expenditures on incentives, charging infrastructure and administrative costs. Out of the lot, Rs 1,000 crore is for installing EV charging stations. In the current fiscal, the government has Rs 300 crore to spend on building the supporting network. In the ratio of 4:3, the rest of the bucketed amount will come into use in 2020-21 and 2021-22.

As you can deduce, the entire activity has just one aim – promote electric mobility. To get the ball rolling further towards the target, the central government has sanctioned 2,636 EV charging stations. To be spread across 62 cities, they promise to encourage consumers to ditch conventionally-powered vehicles in favour of electrified ones. For deploying charging stations, the Department of Heavy Industry had invited the expressions of interest from state governments, union territories and public/private entities for availing incentives under FAME II. In total, the government received about 106 proposals to set up around 7,000 EV charging stations.

Out of the 2,636 facilities, 1,633 will be fast-charging stations whereas the remaining 1,003 will feature slow charging tech. Put together, around 14,000 chargers will go live across the selected sites. The most number of facilities will come up in Maharashtra (317), followed by Andhra Pradesh (266), Tamil Nadu (256) and Gujarat (228). Uttar Pradesh will get an additional 207, whereas Rajasthan will set up 205 new facilities. In Delhi and Chandigarh, both of which are Union Territories, a total of 72 and 70 stations have received approval, respectively.

There’s still some paperwork in the way before the government issues sanction letters to the shortlisted entities. Amongst the prerequisites is that there’s enough availability of land for charging stations.

Source: PTI