Mahindra electric working to increase driving range for fleet car to 200 km per charge

Mahindra Electric on Friday announced a tie-up with taxi aggregator Uber to run its electric vehicles - mainly sedan eVerito and electric hatchback e2o Plus. The company had earlier inked a similar agreement with Uber's rival Ola Cabs.

According to the officials, to begin with, the companies will deploy hundreds of electric vehicles in Delhi and Hyderabad. Automaker's e2oPlus hatch and the eVerito sedan will be used on the taxi-hailing platform.

The partnership is then likely to be extended to other cities across the country.

“As pioneers of electric vehicles (EVs) in the country, we would like to be at the forefront, leading this charge towards smart and sustainable mobility,” Dr. Pawan Goenka, Managing Director, Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd said on Friday.

The company said that they are also working to stretch the current driving range of its car on the to 200 km per charging, which currently is around 130-140 km. The increase in driving range will give the driver of the car an entire day to drive without having to worry about the recharging.

Goenka said that his efforts is not only to bring down the total cost of the car but also to increase the driving range, so as to make it sustainable in the long run. Goenka added that he does not expect government and Uber subsiding the cars in the long run and hence increase in driving range of the car should not push its sticker price.

Commenting on the infrastructure including the charging stations required for successful implementation of the project, Madhu Kannan, Chief Business Officer, Uber India & Emerging Markets said that the modalities of creating the charging stations is being worked out with the aide of huge data that they have in possession of the road and traffic.

According to an estimate, the total number of EVs sold globally in 2016 stood at 6,000-7,000 units at the end of 2016 with only about 2000 EVs in India. However , the situation is expected to change post the execution of 10000 vehicle orders from government owned EESL (Energy Efficiency Services Ltd).

Auto major Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) which is betting big time on Electric Vehicles (EV) will be investing around Rs 600-800 crore in next 2-3 years to increase the capacity of its battery assembly plant. The company has already spent around Rs 600 in the sector since the time it first acquired Bengaluru based Reva Electric car company in 2010. This investment will be different from the product development which the company is doing with its Italy based partner Pininfarina and Korea based SsangYong Motors, both the foreign companies in which it has invested in earlier years.

M&M's push for EV comes on the backdrop of government's push on the segment in the big way as it expects around 5 million of it to be sold by around next 15 years. As per a report released by Centre's think tank Niti Aayog the accelerated adoption of electric and shared vehicles could save about $ 60 billion in diesel and petrol costs while cutting down as much as 1 gigatonne (GT) of carbon emissions for India by 2030. This would result in an annual diesel and petrol reduction of 156 million tonnes of oil equivalent making a net fuel cost saving of approximately Rs 3.9 lakh crore.

Mahindra Electric, the electric vehicle manufacturing arm of Mahindra Group, assemble around 400-500 battery at its Bengaluru plant. The company wants to increase it to 1000 units per month within next six month and further escalating it to 5000 units per month within next 2-3 years, for which the company is investing in its Pune plant, Goenka had earlier said.