India's Mahindra & Mahindra announced it would invest ₹12,000 crore in its electric vehicles unit and launch a range of new EVs next year.
M&M currently offers only one EV model -- the sport utility vehicle XUV400, but plans to launch five all-electric SUVs based on its new, purpose-built electric platform INGLO, starting December 2024. Earlier this year, it tied up with Germany's Volkswagen for access to MEB, the latter's open platform for electric vehicles. M&M said it would use 50 GWh of electric components and unified cells components from MEB in INGLO.
The company also announced plans to sell some assets associated with its EV car business to the group's electric vehicles unit, Mahindra Electric Automobile for around ₹800 crore. M&M plans to list the EV unit, but is waiting for it to achieve market success.
The group is bullish on the electrification of vehicles. Group MD and CEO Anish Shah told a smart manufacturing summit in February: "EV is a far better technology than ICE (internal combustion engines). Emissions are non-existent; you have much greater fuel efficiency, though, it's effectively close to zero cost in the sense of operating costs that you would have for an EV. Servicing an EV is much easier."
However, he noted that EVs face challenges, notably their higher cost than conventional vehicles and their dependency on charging infrastructure. "First, the cost needs to be at parity with ICE because folks don't want to pay more. The second is that charging has to be available everywhere. That is what we are seeing as a challenge today, and even in the US, there are a number of issues around charging not being available," Shah noted.