By Sohini Das
Mahindra and Mahindra (M&M) is going all out for a comprehensive electric vehicle (EV) play, with passenger vehicles (PVs), e-three wheelers as well as niche e-farm products.
Analysts have predicted a 23 per cent volume growth for the auto segment between FY22 and FY25, riding on the company's differentiated EV and SUV plan.
M&M is already a market leader with a 36 per cent share in electric three-wheelers, and its Zaheerabad plant in Telangana is ready to cater to demand.
In the farm segment, the company plans to focus on niche electric products.
However, M&M's prime play will be electric SUVs.
It has already started expanding its PV capacities, which is now 39,000 a month.
This is to be scaled up to 49,000 a month by FY24.
Besides, it is setting up a Rs 10,000-crore EV facility in Pune that will roll out its new SUV on the INGLO platform, the XUVe8.
This will be followed by four more EVs on the INGLO platform till October 2026 and beyond. M&M's tryst with EVs started with an electric three-wheeler called Bijlee back in 1999. The 10-seater vehicle was launched at a price of Rs 330,000 in Delhi in 2002.
In 2013 it launched the e2O on the Reva platform that it had acquired in 2010.
M&M discontinued the product in 2019 amidst flagging sales and tightening regulations. Now with a refreshed EV plan, the company is eyeing 20-30 per cent of its overall sales from EVs by 2027, roughly translating to 200,000 units a year. But has M&M come a bit too late to the party? After all, its peer, Tata Motors (TML), has had a head start in EVs.
Rajesh Jejurikar, executive director and chief executive officer of auto and farm sectors, M&M, disagrees: “The EV penetration in C segment SUVs is less than 1 per cent, and in B segment SUVs it is around 1.5-2 per cent. “You cannot be a late entrant in a segment which has such a low penetration.
“We think that by the time our key products are out, the market will be at an inflection point. “We are not late to the party at all.”
Analysts, however, feel that a 20-30 per cent share of overall PV sales coming from EVs is a very ambitious target.
TML, for example, sold 38,322 EVs in retail in FY23 out of its total sales of 484,843 PVs that year, which is around 7.9 per cent of its PV sales, according to data from the Federation of Automobile Dealers Association (FADA). “When you see the adoption cycle of EVs, we feel that the SUV customer would adapt to an EV faster.
“Many SUV customers are multi-car households, as are our M&M customers. “Therefore, we think that while EVs will be 20-30 per cent of our overall portfolio, we don't think the market would have moved that fast,” Jejurikar said.
M&M has consciously chosen to focus on only e-SUVs, giving entry-level small electric-cars a miss.
