India to be big market for electric vehicles; company studying feasibility of entering segment: Nissan COO

Source: Reuters

India will be a big potential market for electric vehicles in the future and the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi automobile alliance is studying the feasibility of entering the segment in the country, Nissan Motor COO Ashwani Gupta said on Thursday.

The alliance on Thursday announced its 2030 global roadmap that focuses on pure electric vehicles (EVs) and connected mobility with 35 new electric cars to be introduced based on five common EV platforms.

This also entails 23 billion euros additional investment in the next five years on electrification.

When asked about the alliance’s plans for the Indian market and localisation of EVs in the country during a global virtual conference, Gupta said there were three things — product excitement, competitiveness and EV ecosystem — which it wanted to study for India before announcing the plans.

"Definitely, we will be there but please give us some more time to study. But I can tell you that in one year, Indian EV market has grown by three times and India is going to be a big potential for the EV market,” he said.

While the new platform CMF-BEV announced on Thursday will first focus on Europe, Gupta said "this platform may have opportunities around the world”.

Elaborating on the study of the Indian market by the alliance, Gupta said, "At first, the product excitement. For sure, we know that based on our experience, we will be overachieving the aspirations of Indian customer.”

The second aspect is competitiveness, he said, adding although the alliance has the platform available, the "only question is how we are going to localise the battery and this is a question which we want to study.”

The third, he said, "is the ecosystem which includes the infrastructure and this is where we are going to study.”