What are Maruti’s plans on the EV front? Has there been a change of heart?

You can almost call it a change for Maruti as it is gradually softening its scepticism about electrical vehicles. Maruti Suzuki remained a non-believer in the EV story for a very long time, but its plans seem to have made rapid strides in the last few months. Obviously, with Maruti consistently losing market share to competitors, they had to do a rethink. For instance, its share of passenger cars fell from 52% to just about 44% over last one year.

Mr. Hisashi Takeuchi, who was recently appointed as the Managing Director and CEO of Maruti Suzuki Ltd, wants to make a quantum shift in favour of EVs. While agreeing that the adoption of EV will take time in India, he still expects it to be the next big trend. To make up for lost time, Maruti plans to launch multiple electric vehicles (EV) models in India with first EV launch planned somewhere around 2025. Maruti expects to attain leadership soon.

As per confirmation coming from Maruti Suzuki, the first model in 2025 will be produced from its Gujarat factory and will be rolled out from Suzuki Motor Gujarat's plant. While Maruti had been behind the curve in introducing EVs in the Indian market, it plans to make up for the delay by better fine tuning its product for Indian condition. In FY22, the total sales of EVs were just about 17,802 units; a small fraction of total passenger car sales in India.

While Tata Motors is the leader in EVs with a market share of over 70% in India, the CEO of Maruti is pushing for a bigger slice of the cake. After all, even the government is pushing for EV sales penetration increasing to 30% for private cars by 2030. Maruti believes that even if a more conservative 10% penetration is achieved by 2030, it would still be a huge market. However, Maruti remains fairly doubtful about the feasibility of an affordable EV.