The Business Bytes
TBB BUREAU
BHUBANESWAR, AUG 18, 2023
With electric vehicles (EVs) bringing about a historic transformation of the car manufacturing industry worldwide and the EV market accelerating faster than ever before, luxury car maker Mercedes-Benz is expecting its EV portfolio to make up 25 per cent of its total car sales in the next three years, growing from the current levels of 3-4 per cent, said Mercedes-Benz India Managing Director & CEO Santosh Iyer on the sidelines of the launch of GLC, its new petrol/diesel SUV, here on Friday.
“We feel that there would be a rapid adoption of EVs in India, and at this stage we are looking at three to four new EVs in the next 12 to 18 months… And in the next three years we feel that 25 per cent of our sales would be EVs in India,” Iyer said, while adding that it would be easier for Mercedes-Benz car users to adopt electric vehicles as most of them already have charging facilities at home or office and may not depend on public infrastructure.
The German carmaker’s Pune plant has the capacity to produce 20,000 units annually, which can be ramped up to 40,000. The ongoing investments in the plant amount to approximately Rs 2,700 crore, with an additional Rs 100 crore invested for the GLC model launch, said Iyer.
In terms of sales performance, Iyer said Mercedes-Benz has already sold over 8,500 cars during the first half (H1) of the current calendar year (2023) registering 13 per cent year-on-year (Y-o-Y) and expects double-digit growth for the full year.
Though Odisha contributes just 1 per cent to Mercedes-Benz’s all-India sales, Bhubaneswar remains one of the key emerging markets for the German luxury carmaker in India with a growth of 18 per cent, higher than the national average in the H1 (January-June) 2023 sales.
“With rapid industrialisation and significant infrastructural development, Odisha is one of the fastest growing markets for us. We see higher purchasing power and higher affinity to top end vehicles,” said the Mercedes-Benz India Managing Director & CEO hoping that the trend will continue to move northwards.
Assembled at the company’s manufacturing plant at Chakan in Pune, the GLC is Mercedes-Benz’s highest selling SUV in the country and also a key product globally. The luxury SUV is available with 2 powertrains: GLC 300 4MATIC (petrol) and GLC 220d 4MATIC (diesel), priced Rs.73.5 lakh and Rs.74.5 lakh (all-India ex-showroom), respectively.
Iyer said the new GLC petrol/diesel SUV launched in Bhubaneswar today has already garnered over 1,500 bookings so far across the country, including 25 from Odisha.
