Contrary to the buzz that Maruti Suzuki India Limited (MSIL) electric car will be priced in range of Rs 7.5-10 lakh, chairman RC Bhargava told shareholders at the 41st annual general meeting (AGM) on August 31 that the vehicle will be priced at the “upper segment” of the market.
“EV production will happen at the Suzuki plant in Gujarat, and we expect them to roll out by 2024-25. They will be at the upper segment of the market. We are not going to start at the lower end of the market,” said Bhargava, as he faced multiple questions on the company’s electric vehicle roll-out plan in the medium to long term.
Also Read : How to check whether your PAN card is linked with Aadhaar card
When Moneycontrol reached out to him, Bhargava did not share the price but confirmed that the car would not be priced under Rs 10 lakh in spite of heavy indigenisation.
Bhargava’s statement comes at a time when automakers such as Tata Motors and Mahindra (M&M) are aggressively expanding their EV portfolio. Other players like MG Auto, Hyundai India and Kia India are also gearing up to launch their electric cars (e-cars). Overall, nearly 25 e-car rollouts are in the pipeline over the next year or so.
We hope to get good customer acceptance in the market. These have been carefully designed and made. There will be a fair degree of indigenisation because of the battery. Suzuki Motor Corp is setting up a battery plant in Gujarat,” said Bhargava, fielding questions from shareholders.
Maruti Suzuki’s parent company Suzuki Motor Corporation (SMC) recently announced an investment of Rs 7,300 crore to set up a facility at Hansalpur, Gujarat for manufacturing e-advanced chemistry cell batteries for electric vehicles. The facility was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on August 28.
At the last year’s AGM, Bhargava said MSIL would not enter the EV space in the short term. I would start selling EVs only when there was reasonable volume and would not incur losses.
Talking about other green initiatives, Bhargava said, “We are also going ahead with the green energy programme by rapidly increasing the production of CNG cars to 4-4.45 lakh units per annum. That is a big jump. We could have done much more but there are some shortages in critical components on the CNG side too.”
While acknowledging the sharp fall in net profits and sales, India’s passenger car leader heaved a sigh of relief as sales are rebounding owing to the abatement of the semiconductor crisis as well as the moderation in raw material prices.
Also Read : Atal Pension Yojana rule change: Income taxpayers cannot join from October 1, should you invest now?
“From 2019-20, while MSIL sales dropped 16 percent, the industry as a whole dropped 18 percent. The drop happened because of the price increase owing to switchover to BS-VI emission norms. Then Covid happened from 2020-2021.
“During this period there was a semiconductor shortage all over the world. So we were not free from the loss of production that was happening in virtually every company. Now all that is behind us,” added Bhargava.
At the first physical AGM after two years following Covid, he reaffirmed that MSIL aimed to increase production to 20 lakh units in the current fiscal, largely owing to the greater availability of semiconductors.
He also said MSIL’s contribution to Suzuki’s global production would go beyond 60 percent, which was achieved last year.
