Following the news that Indian automaker Mahindra & Mahindra announced its plans to launch 13 new products by 2027 including eight EVs;

Bakar Sadik Agwan, Senior Automotive Consulting Analyst at GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company, offers his view:

“With these mid-term plans, Mahindra and Mahindra (M&M) eyes leadership in the core SUV segment in the Indian market and aims to expedite its electric vehicle (EV) progress by expanding the ‘presently-limited’ line-up. The company has planned to launch 13 SUVs across its existing and new brands by 2027 out of which eight will be EV. This noteworthy announcement is likely to give a significant boost to M&M’s competitiveness in India and globally.

“M&M brand in India is synonymous to ‘real’ SUV maker with the company making a strong comeback in the market with its core SUV product Thar in 2020 and has now been creating buzz with its all new XUV700 launch. It also aims to roll-out a hybrid version of the SUV by 2021. For some time, compact SUVs remained a major battleground for most OEMs in the market, but now with every leading OEM well-positioned in the sub-compact/compact SUV segment, bigger or the core SUVs looks to be the new battleground – a segment which is M&M’s core expertise.

“This year has witnessed the launch of a slew of mid-size and large SUVs namely Hyundai Alcazar, M&M Bolero Neo, M&M XUV700 and Tata Safari. M&M is also ready with new products and its legacy vehicle Scorpio too is expected to hit the market soon.

“While the company’s core SUV plan looks completely justified and has always been the key part of M&M’s business strategy, the rapid expansion of the EV portfolio is something interesting to be watched. With the conducive government policies and a push to enhance the charging infrastructure, the EV market in India holds significant growth potential. Domestic players such as Tata Motors are presently the key beneficiaries of the existing growth potential in the market. With quite a decent EV line-up, the company stands as a market leader in the EV segment. M&M, which already has hands-on experience in electric mobility, can eye similar leadership in the Indian market with its future products.

“Additionally, the government aims to bring cost of EVs at par with ICE vehicles in India through its production-linked incentives (PLI) and the declining cost of EV related technologies such as batteries to boost adoption. M&M’s EV vision is expected to compliment the government’s plan of achieving EV sales penetration of 30% for private cars by 2030.”