Surprisingly the questions I am asked more and more often are about EVs
With
the festive season round the corner, the industry is looking upbeat with a number of new launches planned this month.
Surprisingly the questions I am asked more and more often are about EVs. It's not just that the launches and numbers racked up by Tata Motors have not gone unnoticed but also spew of state EV policies and incentives that have come to the fore as well as the big push for duty withdrawal for EV imports. Some of the international brands that already have EVs in their portfolio are seriously looking at indigenization of their products to as great a degree as possible while other are looking at making India-specific products. It would not surprise me to see a sudden spurt in the number of EVs being offered in India over the next 2-3 years.
Coming back to more immediate matters, the talk has all been about the new Mahindra SUV and rightly so - as it is, apart from anything else, bringing the cutting edge technologies that will make our cars safer to the masses. With Mahindra having taken the lead, others are sure to follow and the second SUV with many of these features is also about to be launched in the form of the MG Astor. Actually, it may very well be the first to bring ADAS features to a much wider audience and that can only be a good thing for Indian roads as hopefully more and more manufacturers will follow suit.
We have tried and tested some of the ADAS features on the Mahindra XUV700 and you can read the report in this issue of the magazine as we also put two of its rivals head-to-head to find out which out of the Alcazar and the Safari is better. And as things are these days with cars so close to each other in terms of performance etc, our road tests help you differentiate between vehicles depending on your needs. A more comfortable car or one that's more fun to drive? And they aren't necessarily the same car even though the winner of our road test may be either of them.
Till next month then, drive safe, wear your seatbelt or your helmet as you head out of home this festive season.