The goal of India's mainstream car manufacturers, which include Maruti Suzuki, Hyundai, and Tata Motors, is to break through consumer resistance to affordability by offering more mass-market options than ever before.
"The adoption of EVs in the passenger vehicle segment in India has been rather slow," the companies say. Over the next two years, they plan to introduce one electric car per month. With the breaking initiative of introducing one electric car every month for the next two years, industry behemoths are on course to change mindsets of the consumer and drive mass adoption of electric vehicles.
Reasons behind Slow adoption of EVs in India
This slow adoption can be attributed to three main factors: the high cost of acquisition (EVs are usually 1.35–1.7 times more expensive than equivalent petrol cars), range anxiety among prospective buyers resulting from the absence of charging infrastructure, and the relatively small number of mass models in this market. The adoption rate is anticipated to rise as battery costs decrease, new models are released, and range anxiety decreases.
According to Shashank Srivastava, senior government officer for advertising and gross sales at Maruti Suzuki, there is a greater likelihood of adoption once penetration reaches approximately 5%. It is anticipated that India's EV penetration will reach about 20% after this inflection point.
Future plans
There are currently only about six electric cars that cost up to Rs 30 lakh, which restricts the options available to buyers on the more affordable end of the market. Native auto majors anticipate that by 2030, gross sales of electric cars will have increased by more than ten times, to a million to one million units annually, thanks to these new product interventions. In CY2023, about 83,000 electric cars were purchased nationwide.
Car manufacturers plan to introduce ten electric vehicles (EVs) in FY25, including the Mahindra XUV e8, Maruti Suzuki eVX, Tata Curvv, and Kia EV9. Kia India's national head of gross sales and advertising, Hardeep Singh Brar, agreed."Customers in the mass market have fewer options because there are only a few models priced up to Rs 30 lakh," Brar said. "Over the next two years, as more electric cars become more affordable and as charging stations proliferate, penetration will increase." In the country, there are roughly 12,000 public charging stations compared to 68,000 petrol stations that sell petrol and diesel.
The government is already working to expand the EV charging infrastructure across the country in conjunction with the private sector. Over the past year, three state-run oil advertising companies have received Rs 800 crore as a capital subsidy from the Ministry of Heavy Industries (MHI) to establish 7,432 public electric vehicle charging stations. It also approved the establishment of 148 charging stations by various organisations.
According to industry estimates, the planned new car launches, which could nearly triple the number of electric vehicles available in the country and increase the variety of public charging stations, will help the market reach the tipping point in two to three years.
What does the companies have to say?
Given the aggressive plans outlined by automakers such as Tata Motors and Mahindra & Mahindra, the manufacturing of electric mild automobiles in India may very well reach 1.5 million units annually in the base-case scenario by 2030, according to Gaurav Vangaal, associate director (light vehicle production forecast, Indian sub-continent), S&P Global Mobility.
He claimed that by the end of the previous decade, "even market leaders Maruti Suzuki and Hyundai had introduced plans for practically a dozen fashions to launch in this house." "That being said, we also need to keep in mind that a lot of work is being done on hybrid, CNG, ethanol, and flexible petrol vehicles that can coexist with electric vehicles."
Also Read: Classic Cars That Still Steal the Show