‘Electric vehicles will have to make sense to the consumer’s wallet’
Mahindra is pursuing its electric dream on two fronts, Pawan Goenka, managing director of the firm, said. The first being mass market and the second luxury under the Pininfarina brand, which will largely be modelled on the lines of Tesla. Edited excerpts from an interview: makes sense to the wallet. Today, we are just short of that. Another ₹40,000-50,000 difference will get us there. If the pressure is on us to bridge that gap by working on reduction of costs and we are not making money otherwise, that pressure is much higher than if you start making money. So, it is okay for us to be under some pressure to reduce the price of electric vehicles but not to the extent that we give up. I am on the side that says let me work on filling the gap.
But what needs to be done first is push volumes. Without volumes, I cannot fill the gap. What the government needs to do is not think how do you incentivise the financial part of it but how do you create a condition for more volumes. In places like Delhi, it is very easy where they can say that in peak time, you cannot ply small commercial vehicles, except if it is electric. I don’t need anything else. Then the volume will come. Pininfarina started as a dream but we still have to worry about financial viability. The company that has made electric vehicles respectable is Tesla. But they are not making money. We would like electric vehicles to become a matter of pride not because they are electric but because they are great cars. That’s what Tesla has done. Pininfarina is the brand that we have and with Indian expertise in electric, it becomes a natural way for us.