Ford opting out of e-vehicle consortium mars govt plans

The pressure of timely implementation of BS VI emission norms and a decision by American auto major Ford against participating in the electric and hybrid consortium will slow down the electric mobility plans of the government.

Ford’s India arm had earlier expressed willingness to join hands with other Indian auto companies like Maruti Suzuki, M&M, Mahindra Reva and Tata Motors in a consortium to create a supplier base of hybrid and electric vehicle parts. However, its parent company Ford Motor Co is understood to have decided against this. Ford India did not respond to questions on this consortium.

The development has delayed the official launch of the project, scheduled for July 15. Confirming the decision of Ford, a person aware of the developments said, "It will be difficult for an automobile MNC to be part of such a project at India level. Parents of most such companies are already working on electric mobility globally," he said. The case of Maruti Suzuki is different as India forms the largest market for the Japanese parent Suzuki.

The person added that with limited resource and time to achieve Bharat Stage or BS VI emission standards by 2020, there will be a lukewarm interest in general from the automobile industry.

Earlier this year, the government decided to advance implementation of BS-VI to April 2020 from the earlier plan of April 2021. In November last year, it had advanced BS-VI norms by three years to 2021 and BS-V norms by an equal number of years to 2019. However, it has now decided to skip the BS-V norms altogether. After initial resistance, the industry has agreed to work towards this.

The idea behind the consortium was to jointly work towards developing the domestic supplier base at a competitive cost to feed into the electric and hybrid vehicle manufacturing plans to the companies.

India sold 22,000 units of electric vehicles in the year ended March 31, 2016, up 37 per cent from the previous year. This, however, is a tiny volume compared to the 20.46 million vehicles (based on petrol, diesel and CNG) sold last year.

Of the 22,000 electric vehicles, bulk was e-rickshaws and two wheelers. Only, 2,000 units of four wheelers were sold. Companies operating in this segment include M&M and Hero Electric. Commercial vehicle major Ashok Leyland and component maker JBM Group have recently launched electric buses.

The government approved the National Mission on Electric Mobility in 2011 and subsequently National Electric Mobility Mission Plan 2020 was launched in 2013. As part of the mission, Department of Heavy Industries has formulated a scheme called FAME or Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of (Hybrid &) Electric Vehicles in India.