After four decades of shaping India’s mass car market, Maruti Suzuki is drawing on an old playbook as it prepares to enter the electric vehicle (EV) segment, choosing to build customer confidence and supporting infrastructure before launching its debut model. The move comes even as rivals scale up sales and questions persist over whether it has arrived late to the electric transition.
It's debut EV model eVitara is likely to be commercially launched in the January-March quarter, with bookings slated to open soon.
Before that, the country’s largest carmaker is looking to address key concerns that executives say have kept EV penetration low. Maruti is working to address three main concerns: lack of charging infrastructure, inadequate trained service technicians and low resale value through targeted strategies, according to a top executive.
In an interview with Mint, Partho Banerjee, senior executive officer of marketing and sales, said it did not make sense to launch the product in a market that did not address infrastructure and resale concerns of buyers.
Banerjee said the company has established 2,000 charging stations with a target of 1 lakh by 2030, announced an assured buyback scheme to assuage concerns on resale value and trained more than 150,000 service providers across the country.
“We have been here in this market for 40 years, but we are just starting like a fresher. We are also moving like new companies. Forty years ago, we had also moved like this,” Banerjee said, adding that the company will first let customers test-drive the vehicle before taking bookings.
Late entry in a crowded market
Maruti Suzuki was established in 1981 and rolled out its first car, Maruti 800, two years later. The establishment of India's automobile manufacturing ecosystem is widely credited to the rise of Maruti’s economical car sales in the country. At the end of November, the company held nearly 40% market share of India's passenger vehicle market.
Maruti's debut electric offering, e Vitara, will enter a crowded mid-size SUV market with EV offerings such as Hyundai India’s Creta EV, Vinfast’s VF6 and VF7, Tata Motors’ Curvv EV, and Mahindra’s BE 6. While its rivals have already ramped up sales of their electric vehicles, Maruti is yet to officially start the sales.
At the start of the fiscal year in April, Maruti had set a target of producing 70,000 units of debut electric vehicles for FY26 largely earmarked for exports. The company remains confident it will be able to achieve its target.
Ecosystem bets
In August, the company started export of its first electric vehicle to over 100 markets, with initial shipments targeting European countries in search for better profits on these high-cost vehicles, allowing the company headroom to go slow in the domestic market that is seeing robust EV sales.
According to data from the Federation of Automobile Dealers Association (Fada), electric vehicle sales in the country have seen an 83% surge during April-November to reach nearly 120,000 sales.
In the last six months, new EV launches in the country included Tata Motors' Harrier EV, Mahindra’s XEV 9s, Kia Carens Clavis EV and the entry of Vinfast and Tesla with their models.
Maruti faces the prospect of intense competition in the segment but remains confident that its investments in accelerating the ecosystem will be its edge in the market.
“By doing the campaigns which we are doing, bringing all the apps under one umbrella, giving the fast charger confidence to the customer, then showcasing that the product range is really good... It takes care of a lot of concerns,” Banerjee said, adding that the service staff should also be ready before the product launches.
“The same thing happened with the CNG also when we started. The penetration went up and people saw the confidence that availability of the gas is there, then only they will do… it will take time,” the company said.
On 2 December, Maruti’s managing director and chief executive Hisashi Takeuchi had announced that the company had set up over 2,000 exclusive charging points across 1,100 cities as part of its two-pronged strategy to alleviate driving range anxiety among consumers when it begins selling its battery EV.
When waiting pays off
Some analysts suggest that a late entry in the Indian market may not prove to be a big disadvantage to the carmaker after all, as the country's EV penetration is still below 5%.
“Penetration of EV is still fairly low. So while Tata & M&M have a headstart, I would not say Maruti is late, particularly given their network strength,” Subhabrata Sengupta, partner at Avalon Consulting, said. “In a way, a later launch may give them pricing clarity.”
Maruti will sell its debut electric vehicle model through its premium dealership network, Nexa. Asked whether the EV market will move only towards premium models, given the high cost of making the vehicles, Banerjee said that the market leader cannot target only a particular segment.
“We say that as a market leader, we believe we need to be across all form factors and we need to provide all the technologies. We are technologically-agnostic. We are not saying today that you need to buy only this particular technology,” Banerjee said.