New factories registered as Nepal aiming to promote NEVs

As many as 20 electric vehicle assembly plants have been registered with Nepal's Department of Industry since 2015, as the South Asian country seeks to promote electric vehicles to cut the import of petroleum products.

According to the department, most of the planned assembly plants have proposed to assemble less than 1,000 electric vehicles each year in each category－two, three and four wheelers, and there are proposals of producing more two-wheelers while limiting four-wheelers. At least one firm has proposed to produce spare parts in Nepal.

Despite the registration of these assembly plants over the years, hardly any has started to assemble electric vehicles in Nepal.

"I don't have knowledge about anyone starting to assemble vehicles in Nepal," Jiblal Bhusal, director general at the department, told Xinhua. "But I hope that a few of them will start to assemble sooner or later."

He said that Chinese investors, as the leading investors in Nepal, are also eager to invest in electric vehicle manufacturing in the country as the penetration of electric vehicles in Nepal is very low and there is a scope for their growth.

By tapping its hydropower potential over the years, Nepal has a power surplus now, particularly in the rainy season, and the government aims to promote electric vehicles so as to reduce imported petroleum products.

Addressing a news briefing on Wednesday, Energy Minister Pampha Bhusal listed the promotion of electric vehicles as a priority of the ministry, saying fees would be lowered for the charge of electric vehicles.

Sundar Yatayat is one of the Nepali companies which have partnered with a Chinese company to assemble electric vehicles in Nepal, and the company is also operating China-made electric passenger buses in the Kathmandu Valley.

Sundar Yatayat has joined hands with China's Sichuan Guohong Automobile for the production of electric vehicles in Nepal and has established a joint venture, Sundar Auto Engineering.

"We started the construction of the assembly plant just a few weeks ago," Bhesh Bahadur Thapa, director of Sundar Auto Engineering, told Xinhua. "But incessant rainfall in recent days are affecting the construction works."

For now, Nepal is fully reliant on imported vehicles to run transport services inside the country.

Sundar Auto Engineering is building an electric vehicle assembly plant in Sainamaina of Rupandehi district in Nepal's Lumbini province, which will mainly assemble buses and cars.

According to Thapa, the construction work of the assembly plant is expected to be completed within six months if all goes off smoothly amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Our target is to produce at least 4 to 5 electric four-wheelers by May next year if everything goes smoothly," Thapa said, noting that the company plans to assemble 100-300 buses and cars in a year initially.

"If the demand grows, we will have the capacity to produce 1,000 vehicles a year," he added.

It costs around 3.6 billion Nepali rupees ($30.3 million) initially to establish the assembly plant, but Sundar Auto Engineering has the option of increasing the investment up to 9 billion Nepali rupees.

Krishna Prasad Dulal, president of NADA Automobiles Association of Nepal which groups automobile dealers, told Xinhua that electric vehicles have yet gained much market in Nepal.

"An estimated 10 percent of the annual sales of cars in Nepal are electric vehicles," he said. "In the two-wheeler segment, only around one percent of total two-wheelers sold in the market in a year are electric two-wheelers."