Morris Garages India has announced its plan to launch a new affordable electric vehicle in India by the end of Financial Year 2022-23, to strengthen MG's position in the Indian EV space. The new electric vehicle will be priced in the range of Rs. 10 lakh to Rs. 15 lakh, and is targeted towards the mass segment of personal electric mobility. As per MG, the new electric vehicle will be a crossover and it is slated to arrive in the last quarter of the next fiscal year, which essentially means early 2023. This also means that the new EV will compete with the Tata Nexon EV, which is currently the best-selling electric passenger vehicle in India.
MG Motor India wants to launch a mass segment EV for personal electric mobility
Announcing the new EV, Rajeev Chaba, President and Managing Director, MG Motor India said, " (For) our next product after SUV Astor, we have been thinking about an EV and now we have been very encouraged with the absolute clarity from the government side that EV is the way to go." He added, "It is actually a kind of a crossover, and this is going to be based on a global platform, which we are going to develop, and this will be an EV for the mass market for all the emerging markets including India. We will customise this car for the range and the Indian regulations and customer taste. It will be specially tailored for India. We will start working on it right now." Considering it's being built for the emerging markets, MG Motor is also likely to export the new electric vehicle to other Right-Hand-Drive (RHD) markets from India.
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One way MG plans to achieve this attractive price point for the new EV is with heavy localisation of parts
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Confident that the new electric crossover will be MG Motor India's volume EV car, Chaba added "This is the kind of tipping point that we have been talking about, that if we are able to do a car between Rs. 10 lakh and Rs. 15 lakh that can give us good volumes." One way MG plans to achieve this lucrative price point for the new EV is with heavy localisation of parts, which will allow the company to meet the government's guidelines for the production linked (PLI) scheme, which was announced for the auto sector. The company says this would include battery assembly, motors and localisation of other parts.
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Earlier in September, the union cabinet approved a Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme of nearly Rs. 26,000 crore for the auto sector, for a period of five years. The scheme was mainly to boost the manufacturing of electric and fuel cell vehicles in India. Right now, MG Motor India's only offering in the electric mobility segment is the ZS EV, which is available in two variants priced at Rs. 21 lakh and Rs 24.68 lakh (ex-showroom, India) respectively.
