A month before Mahindra & Mahindra is set to unveil its all-new range of electric vehicles (EVs), the brand’s as yet unnamed electric passenger car subsidiary has just received an investment of Rs 1,925 crore from British International Investment, with the UK-based investment impactor receiving a 2.75-4.76 percent stake in the EV firm.
At the start of the year, not much was known of Mahindra’s EV plans, except that the brand intended to continue sticking to its sport utility vehicle (SUV) speciality even in the EV space, with 16 EV models earmarked for release (across private and commercial vehicle portfolio) by 2027. Out of these it’s the XUV400 that the brand aims to launch first, having just announced that it will debut as early as September this year.
In the meantime Mahindra has kept our appetites whetted thanks to a teaser video for the upcoming EV unveil on the 15th of August – something of a customary launch date for the brand. Mahindra naming its upcoming launch event “Born Electric” is a way of telling the world that the electric SUVs will all be based on born electric skateboard platforms instead of being derivatives of internal combustion engine-powered vehicles, or ICE platforms retrofitted with an EV platform as is the case with all of Tata Motors’ currently sold EVs. That said, the first Mahindra EV to be launched, the XUV400, will still be based on an ICE car – the Ssangyong Tivoli.
The VW collab
Unlike Tata Motors, Mahindra has chosen not to develop its born EV skateboard platform in-house. Instead, the brand has teamed up with Volkswagen AG, having signed an agreement with the German car making giant to source components like electric motors, battery cells and chassis architecture from VW’s MEB (modular electric drive matrix) platform.
The MEB platform is essentially an open-source skateboard chassis presently being used for all EVs made by VW’s subsidiaries and is modular and adaptable enough for third-party brands to customise it to their own needs.
Mahindra’s “Born Electric” range of SUVs, which include a mid-size SUV, a coupe SUV and a compact SUV, will be based on the MEB platform. The use of a readily available electric platform from a reputed carmaker like VW ensures that Mahindra’s EV subsidiary would be able to put out electric products at a much more rapid rate than even Tata Motors’, whose Avinya concept isn’t going to debut before February 2025.
What about electrification of existing Mahindra models?
Mahindra might retain the XUV name for its upcoming electric models, but it won’t be retrofitting existing SUV sub-brands with EV powertrains. Ladder-on-frame SUVs like the Scorpio are likely to be hybridised to a greater extent as time progresses, but will in all likelihood never be electrified. In the future, when Mahindra’s entire portfolio is electrified (Mahindra wishes to be planet positive by 2040) the Scorpio name along with others may or may not be revived, but for now it’s still an old-school ICE SUV.
The playing field
Despite Mahindra Electric being an early entrant in the EV space with the e2o and the e-Verito models (both discontinued) Mahindra has been noticeably absent from the EV space in the last couple of years as rivals like Tata Motors have taken a considerable lead in the EV market.
However, with a readymade modular EV platform at its disposal, Mahindra could still level the playing field fairly soon despite its delayed arrival in the lithium-ion EV space.
Having announced its recent round of private equity funding, it now joins other EV giants like Tata Motors which received a whopping $1 billion in funding from TPG Rise Climate. Having invested $2 billion, Tata Motors has 10 EV models scheduled for launch by 2026 and, unlike Mahindra, these won’t be limited exclusively to the SUV segment, although a majority of them will be crossovers and SUVs.
Hyundai is also looking at launching six EVs in India by 2028, with a plan of investing Rs 4,000 crore. Hyundai has also announced that its line-up will include a small, low-cost EV and that its EV offensive for India will begin with the globally acclaimed Ioniq 5 launch this year.But the real advantage over time will lie with the company manufacturing cells locally. Although Mahindra has stated in the past that it will be setting up a battery plant and was also open to making EV batteries locally with a global partner, no further developments have taken place on that front.
Maruti Suzuki, on the other hand, which also intends to launch a low-cost EV by 2025, is already in the first phase of building its Hansalpur, Gujarat-based EV battery plant via a joint venture with Toshiba Corp and Denso Corp.
Tata Motors did announce plans of getting into local battery manufacturing but did not provide any details. In April, at the launch of the Avinya concept, Shailesh Chandra, managing director of Tata Motors passenger vehicles business, said: “We are in the process of indigenously developing the battery management system. In fact, a lot of things that go into making a battery pack are being localised but the cell will take some time”.
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