JSW MG expects 80% of total sales to come from NEVs

With new energy vehicles (NEVs) picking up on the Indian roads, especially after the West Asia crisis and cut in GST rates last year, JSW MG Motor India is planning to launch more NEVs in the market, which is expected to contribute 80 per cent of its overall sales this year, a top official has said.

Anurag Mehrotra, Managing Director, JSW MG Motor India, told businessline that since the GST cut to 5 per cent for EVs last year, the sales have grown multifold for the whole industry and it was not only tier-I cities, but also tier-III and IV towns, where the sales are picking up.

“The amount of conversation on EV cars has gone up in the last 6-12 months. Earlier, a year or two ago, one would not have asked. We have 50 per cent of sales coming from tier-I cities and the rest from tier-II, III and beyond,” he said adding that JSW MG sold around 40,000 units of NEVs last year, which was a growth of 12-13 per cent over previous year.

For the industry also, Mehrotra noted that in the overall passenger vehicle industry, EV penetration was only 3.8 per cent in January this year and in June, it was over 8 per cent.

“Given the growth that we are seeing today, we have already increased our headcount by almost 40 per cent at the plant to cater to the third shift that got added. We will invest ₹3,000-4,000 crore in expansion of the plant to 1.20 lakh to 3-lakh units per annum and new products development, and this year we will spend ₹1,300-1,400 crore out of that total amount,” he said while declining to comment on where the funds would come from.

Meanwhile, the company unveiled a new platform called ADAPT (Advance Drive Architecture Platform Technology), under which it will launch four different vehicles in the NEV portfolio in the next one year.

Designed as a future-ready modular architecture, MG ADAPT will support electric vehicles (EVs), hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) and range extender electric vehicles (REEVs), bringing multiple energy solutions together on a single intelligent platform.

Mehrotra added the company would bring in the products in the shape of sports utility vehicles (SUVs) as of now.

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