Maruti to broaden portfolio as hybrids outsell EVs: Shashank Srivastava

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Shashank Srivastava, Senior Executive Officer (Marketing and Sales), Maruti Suzuki India Ltd, says: “We could expect the month to end around the 375,000 mark for the industry, that should be about 11% growth over last year. March being the last month of the financial year, we are expecting industry sales to be about 42,35,000 or thereabouts which should be a growth of about 8.8% over last year's figure of Rs 38.9 lakh.”

Just going by the kind of comments that we have got from the Minister Nitin Gadkari on lower tax on hybrid vehicles, how are you looking at that getting cheaper soon? What would that potentially mean?
Shashank Srivastava: We will have to wait and see how it pans out. At the moment, hybrids are doing pretty well. The duty on hybrids is 43% compared to 5% on EVs. But despite that, hybrids have been doing pretty well. In the last six months, hybrids have been outselling EVs. A total of 52,500 approximately in the last six months against 48,300 for EVs. One of the big reasons why hybrids have been doing well is that there is no range anxiety associated with it.

Normally, consumers who are considering EVs have that range anxiety because of the lack of charging infrastructure in the country. So that is one advantage that hybrids have over EVs and the cost of acquisition of EVs is also higher. These are the two major factors working in favour of hybrids.

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