SIAM SPEAKS | Ep-14 | Mr. Veejay Ram Nakra | President of Automotive Division at Mahindra & Mahindra

Thank you so much for having me on Sam Speaks.

Yeah, I think if you look at the Indian EV segment, we are still at a very nascent stage. And if I just kind of dial back, you know, we are about 5-6 years into the evolution of the EV category in the country. 2018, The Honorable Prime Minister spoke about how EV is the solution to the climate challenges and the oil import challenge for the country. In 2019, we saw the FAME I policy come out. In 2020, the mobility policy talking about getting EVs to a 30% penetration came out. In 21, we saw PLI come in. So I think the founding or the building blocks that are required to take the EV segment from its current 2% penetration to global standards of 18-20% are in place now. Unless and until we are not able to build scale around this, we will not be in a position where we would have a good economic supply chain that we set up in the country to support scaling up. So from a competitive scenario where we are in the country, early stages, there are very few models that are currently available. Most of them are ICE adopted EVs. We've not yet seen the entry of born electric or pure electric vehicles come into the country. There are about 23 approximately 23 models that are slated for launch in the next 12 to 18 months. I think once that comes in, we will be able to see the advantage to the customer and the real competition playing out.

Yeah, I think it's a great question because if you just dial back to the whole technology of internal combustion engines, India missed out on that opportunity of becoming a global player of scale. But today, since we are the third largest automobile country in the world, we are sitting with that great opportunity to make an India for the world in the EV space. So to do that, like I said, there are some building blocks that have already been put in place, but I think what we need is consistency of policy, consistency of direction, so that we get the entire ecosystem in the Indian automobile industry focusing around EV as the technology for the future. To a very large extent, you know, if I can give you examples of some of the other countries who are now sitting at 30% penetration of EVs, if you take China for example, I mean the government has sort of steered the penetration of EV technology in that country with a support of almost $230 billion over 15 years. So I think we are at an early stage, we require focus, we require single-minded focus if I can say that, and continued support till such time that we get to 20-30% penetration, which is when we will have scale that will allow us to be able to make globally cost competitive products as a part of the Indian automobile story.