Mumbai: Mahindra Automotive Giant (Mahindra) has announced that upgrading its new plant in Chakan, Pune will expand the production capacity of battery packs for electric vehicles as part of a strategy to scale up the production of electric vehicles in India and reduce costs.

The production of electric vehicles is fundamentally dependent on the availability of batteries. While MM imports the batteries, the battery packs are assembled at its plant in Bangalore, India, which can produce 400 to 500 units per month.

As part of its roadmap to increase battery pack assembly capacity, the auto giant will first double its capacity to around 10,000 vehicles, and then 50,000 battery packs per month will be produced at the rate of vehicles after the new plant comes on stream in two years.

Pawan Goenka, Managing Director, Mahindra Mahindra At a meeting on the future direction of Mahindra Electric, I told the media, “We are taking a leap of faith as we expect demand to increase significantly in the coming years.” ‘

But Ghankar said he wants to reduce costs by at least 20% before any ambitious growth is realized.

Indian OEMs are currently receiving government subsidies for electric vehicle production to encourage them to participate in the government’s plan to achieve 100 percent electric vehicles by 2030.

“Our only requirement is to match the subsidy provided by the government. The onus is on the OEMs to reduce costs. But you can’t expect a return in the next 2-3 years.

MM is worth 178 a part of the $ 100 million that the group has invested $ 60 il crore in the development and sale of electric cars. However, with demand not keeping up and production not enough to make up for acceptable losses, automakers are looking for ways to “lead the electric car revolution in India”.

Goenka also partnered with his 2015 Italian automotive design firm Pinininininana to launch the Pininfirina brand of electric cars. Our project is getting closer to approval, but it will take three to four years to launch the product,” he said. He emphasized that the product would be a high quality product fully geared towards the international market, but if possible, it could be introduced in India as well. It is demand traction.

This is despite MM’s recent departure from the market. Demand for the EV market in the UK has been disappointing and domestic carmakers are in talks with fleet owners, cab aggregators and others to achieve mass adoption of EVs. They are also working with IIT Madras for post integration of electric motors.

Automakers such as Suzuki and Toyota are struggling to gain market share due to the recent increase in excise duty rates on hybrid vehicles. Hybrid market.

“I think the government has raised the tax rate because it wants to focus entirely on electric vehicles and it is difficult to subsidize various technologies at the same time. the timing of Niti Aayog’s upcoming report on electric vehicles also speaks volumes,” he said.

However, he added that R&D of hybrid cars will not be hit by the excise duty, but once it is introduced, no new hybrid cars will be launched.