Mahindra & Mahindra isn't the first (or 2nd or 3rd, etc) brand that comes to mind when you think "electric car" but, it is a behemoth of a company and does have some electric offerings. It bought Reva (the outfit that brought the world the G-Wiz) and eventually turned it into Mahindra Electric, and it offers the Mahindra eVerito, an electric variant of the gas-powered Verito. Now, seeing as India has announced plans to phase out internal combustion vehicles by a very aggressive 2030 date, there is a huge opportunity for companies based there (India has prohibitive regulation/tariffs that make it difficult for vehicles not built there to be sold there.) Given that preamble, check out this piece in Autocar Professional that outlines Mahindra's current efforts in the EV arena. Basically, they will introduce 3 new vehicles between 2019 and 2020. Seems a little underwhelming to me, given the scope of the challenge and opportunity facing it and other Indian companies, but I'm anxious to hear other's opinions.
Mahinderas haven't been able to do much in terms of selling their ev thanks to lack of govt subsidies. Their vehicles are prohibitly priced and dont have any infrastructural support from the govt.
I'm not too informed about government support, but I think my main point is that there will be a potentially huge payoff for those who can produce compelling (price and performance-wise) electric vehicles for India. They may have to take a page out of Tesla's book when it comes to infrastructure, maybe not mimicking it completely, but at least not waiting for the government or independent companies to fill the gap.
I think that it would still take another 5 to 10 years for the EVs (also HEVs for that matter) to get popular in the Indian market. As the Indian market is becoming one of the important markets in Asia, the government has to realize the need for the infrastructure development and also subsidies (like that in the Netherlands). This will encourage the customers to shift their focus to the energy efficient and emission vehicles. The country (especially the law makers) has begun to take the need of low emission vehicles very seriously. This can be seen by the bold step take by the law makers last year. The country is skipping the BS 5 (equivalent to Euro 5 emission norms) and is directly implementing the BS 6 (equivalent to Euro 6 emission norms) from the year 2020. This is a positive sign, taking into the fact that the BS 4 emission norms were implemented in 2017. This is putting a lot of pressure, even on the automotive giants because of the end price of the vehicle. Being an India and with experience in automotive industry, I believe that the automotive companies will also require time to 'Indianize' (low cost-many features) their products(which are successful in other countries), which will help them to sustain in the market. Currently there are very few EVs (or HEVs) in the Indian market. One of the prime reasons why they weren't successful is the price. A average customer will not be willing to pay for a EV (not at all good looking!) which is 4 times expensive than the normal gasoline/diesel vehicle. Therefore taking into consideration all the above mentioned factors I believe that the it will take atleast 5 years for the advances EVs and HEVs to run in Indian roads. Coming to the entry of Mahindra & Mahindra in the US market, I'm really curious to see how they will handle the competitions in such an advanced (technology wise) market.
Mahindra has a couple new electric vehicles at Auto Expo 2018. Check out the UDO and ATOM in the video below. What do you think?
Looks like Mahindra will lean on Ford for some of its EV technology. Not sure if this is really the best way forward for Mahindra. Ford isn't exactly leading the way in electric vehicles. I'd like to say Mahindra would do better to just rely on its own knowledge of the Indian market and design something themselves, or let their Reva division come up with something.
