Goldstone-BYD may lose orders for e-buses due to subsidy issues
Electric busmaker Goldstone Infratech, a partner of Chinese electric vehicle major BYD, hit headlines early this year after it bagged orders to supply 290 electric buses, leaving biggies such as Tata-Motors and Ashok Leyland behind. Tata Motors and Ashok Leyland bagged orders for 190 and 50 buses, respectively. But Goldstone will now supply only 160 buses, fewer than Tata Motors’ 190 buses.
The reason: The Department of Heavy Industries has not released the subsidy for 130 buses to Karnataka and Telangana. “We were the L1 (lowest) bidder in the case of 290 buses. But we have got the formal award for 160 buses so far since subsidy has been issued for the rest. It is difficult to say what will happen to the order of 130 buses. So we are considering 160 buses for production right now,” according to N K Rawal, managing director at Goldstone Infratech.
The Department of Heavy Industry (DHI), which released subsidies for a portion of the orders, was working on the second phase of the FAME India Scheme (Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of (Hybrid &) Electric Vehicles in India), he added.
A DHI spokesperson did not respond to reasons behind not granting subsidy for 130 buses. Some commercial vehicle makers have questioned the localisation claims made by Goldstone, a factor to which grant of subsidies was linked. They are wary about the 35 per cent localisation claimed by Goldstone and insisted that the company mostly assembled the buses after importing parts from BYD. These companies have flagged their concerns to the DHI in their representations. Goldstone-BYD claimed the e-bus orders from Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Mumbai under a gross cost contract (GCC) model. Based on the 35 per cent localisation clause, the company will get a 60 per cent subsidy, or ~10 million (whichever is lower), on these buses, spread over a three-year period.