Govt makes Ola Electric refund buyers for EV chargers, Ather, others to follow
Electric scooter makers billed customers separately for chargers and software, exploiting a loophole to qualify for subsidies.
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Editor's note: Ola Electric will reimburse about Rs 130 crore to nearly 100,000 customers who bought its S1 series of scooters, The Economic Times reported on Tuesday, citing government officials. With that, the report said, the government has concluded a probe against the Bengaluru-based company in a case related to what the government saw as mispricing of its electric two-wheelers. The probe began earlier this year following a whistleblower complaint that four companies—Ola, Ather, TVS Motor and Vida—were billing chargers and proprietary software separately to keep the price of their electric two-wheelers down in order to claim a subsidy under the FAME II scheme. The second phase of the Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Electric Vehicles, or FAME, scheme was launched in 2019 and will continue till March 2024. The first phase was launched in April 2015 to encourage the use of electric vehicles by offering subsidies; it ran till 2019. Under FAME II, the government aims to provide subsidies to the tune of Rs 10,000 crore on 1 million electric two-wheelers. But to get the subsidy, manufacturers will have to ensure …
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