The Central government's electric programme initiative EESL has scaled down its electric car order by a whopping 70 per cent to 3,000 units and blamed its largest customer Andhra for the crisis as the present Jaganmohan Reddy government has cancelled the orders placed by the previous Chandrababu Naidu administration. Energy Efficiency Services (EESL) had in 2017 placed orders for 10,000 electric sedans from Tata Motors (Tigor) and Mahindra (Verito) after a lengthy bidding process by March 2019. However, due to subdued demand and certain issues pertaining to their range, the timeline for supply was later extended to March 2020.
Of the total order, the companies have completed delivery of 2,000 units so far (most by Tata Motors), EESL managing director Saurabh Kumar said. "We have decided that by March 2020 whatever the number of vehicles is delivered to us we will close the order at that level," Kumar told PTI on the sidelines of the two-day international symposium on energy efficiency. He expects 1,000-odd units to come in by March. He said the largest order for these EVs came from Andhra when Chandrababu Naidu was the chief minister, but the Jagan Reddy government has stopped taking deliveries since coming to power in May.
Kumar said the bidding for 10,000 EVs in 2017 was done with a view that "we will be able to aggregate demand and the largest order came from Andhra. But the new government in the state has topped taking deliveries. He also said EESL has not taken a decision on the next bidding as a lot of the existing and new players are looking to bring new models with different pricings. "We will see. A lot of new launches are on the way, including from Tata Motors and Mahindra as well as from MG Motor. We will see what prices they offer. Accordingly, we will decide," he said.
Last month, EESL had placed 10 order from Hyundai Motor's Kona electric SUVs of which four have already been delivered at a reported price of Rs 23.71 lakh.
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