“We will soon be coming in with our first electric vehicle. We are the only OEM left (to launch an electric two-wheeler) and it will be launched later this fiscal,” Yogesh Mathur, Director- Sales and Marketing, HMSI, said, while speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the 64th SIAM Annual Session.
"EV market is exciting. Till last year, it was clocking around 5% growth, which has now reached to almost 8%. So, the contribution of EVs is increasing," he said.
Mathur stated that by the end of this decade, the company is aiming for one-third of its overall sales to come from EVs as “a major shift towards EVs is expected to happen by 2030”.
Without sharing much details about the upcoming product, he said that it will be introduced in a phased manner and the company is targeting consumers in the age group of 18-40 years. The EV model is being developed jointly by HMSI and Japan’s Honda teams.
Mathur was quite confident that subsidies by the government will not have an impact on product acceptance in the market. “Minister (Nitin) Gadkari already announced that now this particular segment is matured enough, subsidies eventually will go off. So, we will be living with that condition."
On entering the EV space later than other conventional players in the market, he said, "We are not late, it is a business decision we have taken. There are other segments too. Last time we said that one-third of the motorcycle market was in the 100-110 cc segment, and we were missing there. So we came up with Shine 100, which is now giving us very good growth numbers. We were prioritizing our own challenges.”
The electric two wheeler segment is the biggest volume driver of the EV industry in India. While Honda is yet to make a mark here, other internal combustion engine (ICE) two wheeler makers like Hero MotoCorp, TVS Motor and Bajaj Auto have already taken up a spot in the top 5 manufacturers list. Ola Electric has been taking the lead, with close competition from TVS and Bajaj.
In August, the electric two wheeler market declined substantially month-on-month, with total retail at just over 88,000 units as against over 1.07 lakh in July.
About the existence of multiple fuel technologies in the segment, Mathur said that the overall size and scale of the industry is so big that everybody has a room to grow.
HMSI has a goal to be net carbon zero by 2050.
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