The Department of Heavy Industries has announced partial amendments to the Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Electric Vehicles in India Phase-II (FAME-II) program. Specific demand incentive for electric two-wheelers (E2W) of ?15,000 (~$205)/kWh has now been announced. Earlier, there was a uniform demand incentive of ?10000 ($137)/KWh for all vehicles. Also, the cap on incentive for E2W has been raised to 40% of the total cost of the vehicles. The cap earlier was 20% for all vehicles including E2W. Demand aggregation is identified as the key to bringing down the upfront cost of electric three-wheeler electrics, on par with the internal combustion engine vehicles for multiple user segments.

The Cabinet has approved the proposal of Department of Heavy Industry for implementation of the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) Scheme 'National Programme on Advanced Chemistry Cell Battery Storage’ for achieving manufacturing capacity of Fifty (50) Giga Watt Hour (GWh) of ACC and 5 GWh of "Niche" ACC with an outlay of Rs.18,100 crore (€2.1 Bn). The consumer electronics, electric vehicles, advanced electricity grids, solar rooftop etc. which are major battery consuming sectors are expected to achieve robust growth in the coming years. This dominant battery technologies will control some of the world's largest growth sectors.

Siemens Ltd has signed a MOU with Switch Mobility Automotive Ltd to jointly address need of commercial electric vehicle (EV) customers and execute E-Mobility Projects in India. Switch Mobility will bring its electric commercial vehicle industry experience while Siemens will provide the charging infrastructure technology and charging infrastructure management software solution. The two companies will collaborate on new business models such as eMobility-as-a-Service (eMaas), integrated depot energy management, Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) as well as on-site / off-site renewable energy sources by leveraging batteries from commercial vehicles.

The railways currently rely on optical fibre for their communication network but with the allocation of fresh spectrum, it will be able to use high-speed radio on a real-time basis. It will help in augmenting both communication and signalling networks of the railways. The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved the allotment of a 5 MHz spectrum in 700 MHz frequency band to the Railways for public safety and security services at stations and in trains. The spectrum allocation is in line with the Railways’ objective to provide Long Term Evolution (LTE) based mobile train radio communication on its route, a project with an estimated investment of Rs 25,000 crore (€2.9 Bn).

• Ministry of Road Transport & Highways Issues Draft Notification, proposing to exempt Battery Operated Vehicles (BOV) from payment of fee for issue or renewal of Registration Certificate (RC). Read more>>

Railway Ministry issued following notifications:

• Misclassification of Goods as Works in procurement. Read more>>

• PPP-MII Order, 2017- Clarification regarding local content calculation for imported products.

The DoT, approved, permissions to Telecom Service Providers for conducting trials for use and applications of 5G technology.  These TSPs have tied up with original equipment manufacturers and technology providers which are Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung and C-DOT.  In addition, Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. will also be conducting trials using its own indigenous technology. The duration of the trials, at present, is for a period of 6 months. Each TSP will have to conduct trials in rural and semi-urban settings also in addition to urban settings so that the benefit of 5G Technology proliferates across the country and is not confined only to urban areas. The TSPs are encouraged to conduct trials using 5Gi technology in addition to the already known 5G Technology.

The DoT, approved, permissions to Telecom Service Providers for conducting trials for use and applications of 5G technology.  These TSPs have tied up with original equipment manufacturers and technology providers which are Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung and C-DOT.  In addition, Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. will also be conducting trials using its own indigenous technology. The duration of the trials, at present, is for a period of 6 months. Each TSP will have to conduct trials in rural and semi-urban settings also in addition to urban settings so that the benefit of 5G Technology proliferates across the country and is not confined only to urban areas. The TSPs are encouraged to conduct trials using 5Gi technology in addition to the already known 5G Technology.

The government has launched an online portal for telecom service providers (TSPs) and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to procure gear from “trusted sources” as identified by India’s highest cybersecurity office. The beta portal, though, was expected to launch on April 15. It is currently accessible to only a few TSPs and OEMs.

Meity had released the draft data centre policy which proposed to designate data centres as infrastructure and to group centres under the essential services category among other measures. The government is formulating a scheme to incentivise investments to set-up hyperscale data centres in India and boost the capacity of the existing data centre ecosystem, besides working on new segments like drones and robotics to develop their manufacturing ecosystem in India. “The current scale of hyperscale data centres in India compared in terms of power consumed is 200 MegaWatts and our effort will be to come out with a policy and scheme that aims for a tenfold growth in this, in a very short time,” Secretary - MEITY, said in a virtual session.