Of the set target of four million units by 2030, six lakh units will be EVs and over 1 million hybrid.
Maruti Suzuki the country’s largest car maker has announced its new vision called Maruti Suzuki 3.0 which envisages the company to produce over 1.5 million electrified vehicles by FY-31. The maker of Baleno and Grand Vitara will have a portfolio of 28 vehicles by the end of this business plan.
With a vision to produce over four million vehicles per annum by the end of 8 year business plan, the company in annual report shared that about 15 percent or six lakh units will be battery electric vehicles and about one million units of hybrid vehicles at the end of the cycle. By then the company will also have a portfolio of half a dozen zero emission battery electric vehicles.
The production capacity of the company will jump over 75 percent to four million units from current capacity of 2.25 million units.
The company also guided that its exports volumes will jump three times to 7.5 lakh units by FY-31.
R C Bhargava, chairman of Maruti Suzuki, in his address to shareholders said what is now being planned can be said to be the start of ‘Maruti 3.0’.
He explained that the first phase was when Maruti Suzuki was a public enterprise. The second phase of 2.0 ended with the Covid pandemic, and the Indian car market became the third largest in the world.
“The challenges before the company are unprecedented. It took us 40 years to create a capacity of 2 million units and SMC helped in this process by establishing the Gujarat facility. Your Company now has to add the next 2 million in a period of 9 years. The task of managing all the issues relating to the production of four million units a year requires considerable thought and possible reorganisation of the structure of the company keeping in view the best interests of all shareholders as well as other stakeholders of the company. We will, as soon as possible, announce what we are proposing,” elaborated the chairman.
On the uphill task ahead, Bhargava, who is an industry captain and a lynchpin of Maruti Suzuki’s progress for decades stated that the challenge in front of the company is not only to produce four million cars a year, and possibly higher volumes in the subsequent years and the company will also have to sell this number of cars.
“By FY 2030-31, your Company could have about 28 different models. Clearly the organisation and systems for selling such a large variety of cars will require changes from what exists at present,” he added.
On the development of electric vehicles is proceeding well at the Gujarat facility and the company expects to start the sale of the first model in 2024-25.
“By 2030-31 we expect to have six EV models. These models are expected to comprise 15-20 percent of our total sales by that time. As I have said elsewhere, the conditions in India require that the attainment of carbon neutrality in the transportation sector should be achieved by a mix of technologies that are appropriate to our resource endowment and economic conditions,” explained Bhargava.
The head of Maruti Suzuki said the industry must use the enormous amount of animal waste that is generated in the country. Equally large is the opportunity created by our agricultural and other waste as well as the potential to increase the output from our land resources.
“The use of hybrid technology, ethanol, Compressed Bio-gas and CNG in cars will all lead us faster to our goal of reducing the carbon footprint than relying only on any one technology,” he added.
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