Can electric vehicles ever be affordable for masses: Here's what experts think

The auto industry is gearing up for the transition into electric vehicles. How prepared is the sector and which manufacturers will be impacted?

In an interview to CNBC-TV18, Hemant Luthra, Chairman, Mahindra CIE Automotive, Prakash Diwan of Altamount Capital Management and Bertrand D'Souza, Editor-In-Chief of Overdrive shared their views and readings on the same.

Bosch predicts there will be a mix away from combustion engines but no more than 6-10 percent by 2025, said Luthra.

Mahindra CIE has 50 percent business in forging in India. Forging components do not necessarily go into engine, they also go into transmission, he added.

Only about 5 percent of our total turnover in Mahindra CIE and even less than that is dependent upon whether there is a change in technology from internal combustion engines to electric engines, he said.

We are making acquisitions in two-wheeler, in composites, in plastics to change our strategy but at the moment, I don’t think it will affect how we operate, Luthra further mentioned.

Bertrand D'Souza told CNBC-TV18 that globally the demand is being pushed towards electric vehicles so in that sense we will have to make the transition very quickly.

According to him, 2030 target (for transition to electric vehicles) sounds like a good deadline. The transition should be easy for manufacturers but consumers adapting to that will be the bigger challenge.

Prakash Diwan believes that it will be very early to start looking at companies or stocks that will get positively or negatively impacted.

He also believes that electric vehicles will become mainstream after at least 10 years.

On market impact, Diwan said that, who are only talking about who is going to shut down or who is going to benefit directly but there is a new segment that will appear that is the whole charging infrastructure, charging aggregators and power aggregators. Anybody who is into power distribution chain can extend this.