The central government on Friday said that it has extended the second phase of the FAME scheme by two years. The Department of Heavy Industries in a notification said, “Now with the approval of the competent authority, it is decided that FAME India Phase II scheme is extended for a period of two (2) years i.e. up to 31st March 2024.”

The scheme was proposed to be implemented over a period of three years from April 1, 2019 till 2022.

What is the FAME scheme?

Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Electric Vehicles (FAME) India scheme was started in 2019 to promote sales of electric vehicles and it was supposed to end by 2022.

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The scheme was proposed with an outlay of Rs 10,000 crore and the Centre wanted to incentivise the purchase of 7,090 electric buses, 35,000 four-wheelers, 500,000 three-wheelers and 1 million two-wheelers, according to LiveMint.

However, most of the products in the segment did not qualify for the incentives due to high localisation norms and other such rules. Meanwhile, the vehicles that qualified did not get enough subsidies to close the price gap with combustion engine vehicles.

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According to autocarpro.in, as of Saturday, June 26, 78,045 vehicles, including 9,984 electric two-wheelers, 16,499 electric three-wheeler and 1,562 electric four-wheelers, have benefited under the FAME scheme.