German luxury carmaker Mercedes-Benz is expecting 25 per cent of its sales in India coming from electric vehicles in 5 years compared to the current 2 per cent.
“When we came to India two years back the question was whether India is ready for EVs but today that question is not there. We could not match the demand-supply equation due to the pandemic but with whatever we can supply currently, we are at 2 per cent. The demand is not the challenge,” said Santosh Iyer, MD, and CEO, Mercedes-Benz India, speaking to businessline.
EVs over ICEs
The carmaker has variants of EQC, EQB, and locally assembled EQS in its electric vehicles portfolio in the country. While the present waiting period for the EQS is two-three months the company is seeing an uptick in demand for electric vehicles (EV) over internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles in the same product portfolio in India.
“We launched EQB with both EV and commercial engines, with approximately similar prices, and today we are seeing that 70 to 80 per cent of the demand is now going for electric vehicles and only 20 per cent is for ICE. This indicates that customers are going for electric vehicles when there are absolutely identical options available. We have not called the market the way we should have called it and we are doing those corrections in the next 5-6 months,” said Iyer.
Charging network
While private players and the central government are installing chargers to reduce range anxiety among Indian consumers, Mercedes-Benz India has created a network for EV chargers at 140 points with high-capacity chargers.
“Our cars have long-range, which means bigger batteries. If you go to small 25kw chargers, it will take around three hours to charge. For high capacity charging, we have set up the largest super-charging network. We have invested more than 20 crore in EV charging infrastructure and have 25 super-chargers, along with medium and DC chargers. We intend to be present on important highways,” added Iyer.
businessline had earlier reported industry experts’ take on India’s transition to electric mobility. They said that the transition will be faster as automobile companies are making big-ticket investments in the development of infrastructure to facilitate electric vehicle penetration in the country.