Source : PTI | New Delhi: Maruti Suzuki India aims to bolster charging infrastructure in the country before it drives in e VITARA with plans to establish the model as a primary vehicle in a household, according to a senior company executive. The auto major also plans to boost after-sales support, bring in a leasing model and more finance options to encourage customers to buy the model.
“One of the major concerns for the customer is the adequacy of the public infrastructure in terms of the chargers. So we are planning to have a fast charger at a frequency of 10 kilometers in the top 100 cities,” Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) Senior Executive Officer (Marketing & Sales) Partho Banerjee told PTI in an interaction.
Currently top 100 cities in the country account for almost 97% of the total EV sales, he stated while elaborating on the plan.
“We believe that the customer who will be buying the car will be moving out of the city as well so we want to make our e VITARA as the primary car, not the secondary car and to make it a primary car, it is very important to provide a good after-sales support,” Banerjee said.
As per the industry figures, electric passenger vehicles in the country today are mostly bought as a second or third vehicle in a household.
Banerjee said the auto major is planning to have 1,000 cities where it will be providing the EV after-sales support in case someone is having an emergency, he added.
“So this more or less covers the entire India. We want to make e VITARA as the primary car, then only the EV car penetration will go up,” he stated.
MSI unveiled the electric SUV in the Bharat Mobility Global Expo.
The e VITARA will first be exported to a few key markets overseas before being put on sale in India.
The production of the model is expected to commence later this year at MSI’s Gujarat plant which would also cater to all export markets.
“We are planning to have an overall ecosystem before we launch it here. When we started 40 years back, we first created the infrastructure, and then we started selling the product. So this time, also our thought is that when we start selling the product, the ecosystem should be in place,” Banerjee said.
The company is also training manpower at its dealer network with soft skills to handle customer queries regarding EVs, he said.
“Soft skills is an ongoing thing, actually, that is more to do with the etiquette and how you handle the customer, but fundamentally, rightly said that it is very important that how we address the concerns and the query of the customers pertaining to the electric vehicle. So for that also, our work is going on,” Banerjee noted.
Besides, the company also plans to introduce a service on wheels initiative to take care of breakdowns and to cater to technical issues in areas where after-sales support is not available.
“We are going to have more than 300 such mobile units,” Banerjee stated.
About 99,165 electric cars were sold in India in 2024, recording 20% year-on-year growth, according to Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations (Fada).
