Sensing the reluctance of both Indian car makers Mahindra and Tata Motors along with other multinational car makers to make electric cars in India Japan has seized the opportunity to win over the Indian government by finally committing to develop electric cars in India.

The Indian government has been providing a carrot & stick to Mahindra & Tata to develop electric cars and they… have been reluctant to promote electric cars ahead of their petrol & diesel cars:

• The car makers have eaten up the FAME subsidies which were intended for the customers.
• The electric cars are given inferior features (no navigation screen/reverse camera/regen-braking feedback, etc).
• Diesel cars are set to be banned in year 2030 yet every year these car makers keep introducing better quality diesel cars as if they are unaware of the 2030 deadline.

This is in spite of the Transport Minister threatening them to go ahead with Imported car makers if local car makers are not up to the task.

(the Government has to stipulate that new Taxi permits will be given only for electric cars. Else this malady will never get rectified.)

The Indian government had demanded 10,000 electric cars for their officials… but unfortunately both Tata & Mahindra  have failed to meet the deadline. A few cars were delivered to the government but the corrupt officials refused to accept it. These officials were probably using the govt allowance to not only fuel their cars but also for those of their family members. There has to be account of how many ltrs of petrol every official is using!

The other day RushLane caught Maruti Suzuki testing out their Electric car which weirdly resembles a Wagon-R instead of their top seller Alto.

New sales of passenger vehicles are seen increasing to 10 million units a year by 2030, from 3.28 million units sold in the last financial year.

Suzuki hopes to continue to have 50 percent market share in India from now through 2030, which would mean achieving sales of five million units a year by then.

For that to happen, Maruti Suzuki’s will have to grow at the same pace as the domestic market and increase threefold in number from the 1.64 million units sold last year.

“We want to continue to control 50 percent of the market and achieve annual sales of 5 million in the country,” said Osamu Suzuki.

Stating that SMC had taken up a challenge to ensure that 30 percent of its five-million-units sales target is met through sales of electric vehicles, the chairman said that he is ‘firing up executives every day’.

Maruti Suzuki is currently working on an all-electric car, due for debut in India in 2020, which will be a completely new model and not an electric version of any of its existing models.

The car will be jointly developed by Suzuki and Toyota under an alliance that was announced in 2017.