By Amit Panday
New Delhi: Electric vehicle sales across two, three and four-wheelers declined 20% year-on-year to 2,36,802 units in fiscal 2020-21, the Society of Manufacturers of Electric Vehicle (SMEV) said in an official note on Thursday. A total of 2,95,683 electric vehicles were sold in 2019-2020, it said.
The dip in sales last fiscal has come after a growth run over the last 5 years, mainly driven by the demand for electric scooters. According to SMEV, total EV sales were at 1.29 lakh units in FY19; 56,000 units in FY18; 25,000 units in FY17 and 22,000 units in FY16 (all including electric two and four wheeler sales).
Declining 6% YoY in FY21, the electric two-wheeler segment recorded total sales of 1,43,837 units, including 40,836 high-speed and 1,03,000 low-speed vehicles, as against 1,52,000 units sold in FY20.
The electric three-wheeler segment saw volumes drop 37% YoY to 88,378 units last fiscal from 1,40,683 units in FY20. This data, however, does not include electric three-wheelers sold but are not registered with the transport authorities during the last fiscal, SMEV said.
A lot more needs to be done to achieve the target under the FAME II scheme. Timely intervention by the government in the form of policy change is required to fuel the growth and achieve the target by the end of FY21-22Sohinder Gill, Director-General, SMEV
Meanwhile, with total sales of 4,588 units in the electric four-wheeler category, it recorded a YoY growth of 53% on a low base of 3,000 units sold in FY20. The YoY growth in electric cars can be attributed to the healthy numbers recorded by Tata Motors’ Nexon EV. The company, earlier this month, said that it has sold more than 4,000 units of its Nexon EV since the model’s launch in January 2020. In March 2021 alone, the company sold 705 units of the Nexon EV, highest for any month since its launch.“A lot more needs to be done to achieve the target under the FAME II scheme. Timely intervention by the government in the form of policy change is required to fuel the growth and achieve the target by the end of FY22,” Sohinder Gill, director general, SMEV, said.
SMEV, however, remains concerned about the limited financing facilities for EVs.
“A strong bank finance mechanism is still missing in the country. Only a few banks like SBI and Axis Bank, to name a few, are offering loans on selected EV models,” the lobby said.
SMEV, however, credits the booming e-commerce industry that has shown a sharp growth of over 200% YoY in the adoption of EVs in logistics.
“Corporates in India are proactively transitioning towards EVs. For instance, Amazon India and Flipkart have announced that they will deploy EVs in their fleet of delivery vehicles. The future of (EV adoption) in B2B is positive and we will see a lot of traction coming from this segment for the next 2-3 years,” it said.
SMEV is also hopeful that several state governments would contribute in the implementation of EV policies while creating a larger ecosystem involving the charging infrastructure.
