Mahindra Electric on Thursday launched its new electric 3-wheeler cargo model Treo Zor in the Indian market.
The Treo Zor prices start from `2.73 lakh (ex-showroom Delhi, net of FAME 2 and state subsidies). Pawan Goenka, MD & CEO, Mahindra & Mahindra, said the electric three wheelers were ready to take off as the price of these vehicles were getting closer to traditional internal combustion engines (ICE) vehicles on price parity. The total cost of ownership was working out to be lower for EVs. The gap between traditional ICE vehicles and electric three wheelers was reducing, he said. “With BS VI coming in, the price of BS VI vehicles has gone up while price of electric vehicles has not gone up at all. So, the commercial value of electric vehicles in the shared and last mile space has become much better,” Goenka said.
Further with FLAME-II incentives, lower GST and state level incentives, the cost of the electric 3W was now more viable than ICE vehicles, Goenka said. The Karnataka, Gujarat, Delhi and Telangana governments are supporting EV with lower GST, state level incentives along with FLAME-II incentives make it now more commercial viability for service providers. The company said the Treo Zor offered higher savings of Rs 60,000 plus a year versus existing diesel cargo 3W because of the maintenance cost of 40 paise/km. The average net savings over a seven year period was Rs 4,26,898. The total cost of ownership of diesel cargo vehicles works out to Rs 6.95 per km, while Treo Zor’s cost would work out to `5.1 per km, Mahesh Babu, MD & CEO, Mahindra Electric said.
Three wheeler cargo volumes are estimated to go up to 1.45 lakh units by 2030 and EVs are expected to go up 34x and account for 65% to the segment by FY30. The onus is now on the manufacturers, service providers and end users to electrify share mobility and last mile mobility of people and goods, he said. Despite the pandemic and the loss of momentum, Goenka said they were going ahead with all their plans and capex for all the electric vehicles, the Treo Zor, eKUV and Atom. eKUV is focused on shared mobility and will be launched in the next three months. The Atom is an urban mobility solution for first and last mile connectivity and this product is slated to be launched at the end of this financial year. The Treo Zor is aimed at the last mile connectivity for cargo transport. Mahindra is in talks with e-commerce companies such as Flipkart, Amazon, Reliance Retail and BigBasket for meeting their last mile connectivity needs and adding Mahindra’s Treo Zor to their fleet.
The Treo Zor will be made in India with Mahindra Electric making most of these components barring the Lithium ion cells, Goenka said. “We are also putting up a world class facility at Chakan, near Pune for making everything related to electric vehicles except the cells. Our Chakan plant will manufacture high voltage EV battery packs, motors, controllers, power electronics and drive train,” Goenka said. Mahindra has also earmarked an investment of `500 crore for India’s first electric vehicle technology and R&D centre coming up near the Bengaluru Airport and the will be laying the foundation state in the next few weeks, he said. Mahindra has so far invested Rs 1,000 crore in the electric vehicle programme.
Goenka said they were looking at partners for the Mahindra Electric vehicle business and were in talks with financial investors, strategic investors and e-commerce providers. There was significant intercept among them and they were in the process of finalizing this with one or two of these players and till then Mahindra would continue to invest in Mahindra Electric, he said.
