Mahindra: Electric vehicles a profitable business model, don’t need subsidies

New York/London: The only electric-car maker in India says the business case for the clean technology is starting to make sense—and it won’t require government subsidies to take off in a big way.

Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd, which announced a partnership this week with Ford Motor Co. to cooperate in areas including driverless and electric cars, says there’s money to be made in a nascent EV sector that some carmakers warn is curbing their margins. “We’ve just been believers for a while, haven’t been making any money, but now the tipping point seems to be reached,” chairman Anand Mahindra said Wednesday at the Bloomberg Global Business Forum in New York.

Global demand for electric cars has been sluggish to date in part because they remain more expensive than autos fuelled with gasoline and diesel. Bloomberg New Energy Finance projected in July that they’ll turn a corner in the coming years when prices reach parity, and that a third of the global auto fleet will be plug-in hybrid or battery-powered by 2040. Automakers are jostling to lead the fledgling space, with Tesla Inc. debuting its first mass-market EV and Volvo Car Group pledging to put electric motors in all of its new cars by 2019.

“This is not a trade-off. This is the single biggest business opportunity for the next couple of decades,” Mahindra said of sustainable businesses. “Anyone not looking at these opportunities is going to miss out on growth.”

Mahindra India