In its bid to catch up with competitors, Maruti Suzuki will launch multiple electric vehicles models in India. The company plans to launch its first EV model in 2025. To start with, the first EV will be rolled out from Suzuki Motor Gujarat’s plant. “We are a little behind our competitors in introducing the (EV) model to the Indian market, but we see that still, the market demand for those EVs is limited. Actually, sales of EVs in the Indian market are still very, very limited,” said the company’s new Managing Director and CEO Hisashi Takeuchi, PTI reported.
He further said, “We have done a very extensive test of our EV utilising our existing models and putting those batteries and motors and everything into this existing model. We have been doing this test for more than a year with multiple cars in the Indian environment so that we are sure that our EV technology will be good in the environment, which is very, very tough in India,” PTI quoted.
The government is pushing for EV sales penetration to rise to 30 per cent for private cars by 2030.
As per FADA, Tata Motors led the electric passenger vehicle segment in 2021-22 with retails of 15,198 units and a market share of 85.37 per cent in the vertical.
Meanwhile, the use of electric vehicles is increasing in the country. As per the e-vahan portal (Ministry of Road Transport and Highways), at present, there are about 8.77 lakhs active electric vehicles on Indian roads as of 08.12.2021.
Last year, the Union Cabinet approved a Production Linked Incentive (PLI) Scheme for setting up manufacturing facilities for Advance Chemistry Cell (ACC), Battery Storage in India, with a total manufacturing capacity of 50 Giga Watt Hour (GWh) and with an outlay of Rs. 18,100 crores for 5 years.
Source: livemint.com
