AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY UNDERGOING TECH-LED SEISMIC SHIFT

According to Shashank Srivastava, Executive Director (Marketing & Sales), Maruti Suzuki India, we are currently at an inflection point from which we can substantially accelerate our development and leadership journey. Due to geopolitical events, India has become the country of options for multinationals seeking to de-risk their supply chain.

- Sunil Rajguru

What is the future of EVs in India? Can they become mainstream? What are the advantages and challenges? The Indian EV industry witnessed remarkable one million EV sales in FY22-23. However, these numbers are primarily accounted for by two wheelers, three-wheelers and small commercial vehicles. For the passenger car industry, the contribution of EVs was less than 1%. The adoption of EVs in the passenger car segment will happen at a much steadier rate owing to high prices of EVs, short cruising range leading to range anxiety and lack of charging infrastructure. Since emissions standards are tightening globally, including in India, there is an industry consensus that EVs will become mainstream. However, it is safe to say that the transition to a pure EV automotive industry will be a gradual one, as the whole ecosystem including establishment of a charging network and the entire national power grid is prepared to deal with EVs. This is why, we at Maruti Suzuki are taking a holistic approach of developing the whole ecosystem from introducing the born electric vehicles to cell level localization and setting up charging infrastructure.

In the recently concluded Auto-Expo'23, we displayed our eVX Electric SUV concept, which will be our first electric vehicle that will be launched in FY2425. This will spearhead our plan of launching 6 EVs by 2030. Furthermore, Suzuki Motor Corporation has announced the investment of 100 billion to kickstart the production of automotive battery packs for BEVbatteries in India.

So, as the nation progresses towards the Government of India's target of achieving carbon neutrality by 2070, our modus operandi is reducing vehicular emission by exploring and introducing a range of environment friendly technologies like Hybrids, CNG, Bio-CNG, flex-fuel, and electric vehicles across segments.