'The scheme excludes tractors, light commercial vehicles, and medium and heavy commercial vehicles.'
The MINI Scooter E Concept, which is set to appear at Paris Motor Show next week, comes 10 years after BMW unveiled its vision of a modern day MINI.
The group also said it has plans to extend the electric mobility technology to its two-wheelers, while seeking support from the central government for pushing eco-friendly vehicles.
Passenger vehicle sales are expected to experience muted growth in the current financial year.
'Our objective is to reach a localisation rate of 50% in the span of five years.'
BMW Group India recorded its highest annual sales on the back of strong demand for its top-end ICE (internal combustion engine) and electric vehicles (EVs). The German luxury automaker on Thursday announced that its domestic car sales jumped 18 per cent year-on-year (Y-o-Y) to 14,172 units in calendar year 2023 (CY23). This mirrored a trend in the luxury space, with its peers also reporting record numbers.
The company would commence export of battery-operated two-wheelers to the US market from January next year, EKO Vehicle Chairman Anil Ananthakrishna told reporters in Bangalore. Set up in January 2005, the company has so far sold more than 15,000 units of its first product under the brandnames Cosmic and Velociti.
Even as India goes green, lack of uniform standards for setting up charging stations is holding back companies. Alnoor Peermohamed reports.
Bajaj Auto reported steady results in Q1FY25, with revenue surging 16 per cent year-on-year (Y-o-Y), operating profit registering a growth of 24 per cent Y-o-Y, and margins swelling 20.2 per cent. The profitability was aided by 50 basis points (bps) on the accrual of PLI benefits. The domestic prospects for two-wheelers are healthy, though the response to the newly launched CNG motorcycle is a key monitorable.
On the exports front, Bajaj is under pressure in Bangladesh and Africa. On the domestic front, it could ride improvement in rural demand and new launches but it also has to cope with competitive intensity and a high base. The management projects 7-8 per cent volume growth in domestic 2W in financial year 2025 (FY25) with moderation in H2FY25 due to a high base Y-o-Y.
Domestic automobile retail sales rose 10 per cent in June driven by sales growth across various segments, including passenger vehicles and two-wheelers, automobile dealers body FADA said on Thursday. Total retail sales last month rose to 18,63,868 units from 17,01,105 units in the year-ago period. Passenger vehicle retail sales increased 5 per cent to 2,95,299 units as against 2,81,811 units in June 2022.
The stock of commercial vehicle (CV) company Ashok Leyland is up 46 per cent in the past three months, gaining despite worries about a slowdown in sales volume. Brokerages have a mixed view on the country's second-largest medium and heavy commercial vehicle manufacturer. The company reported steady March quarter results and its valuation, focus on growth and medium-term prospects are positive, but some brokerages are cautious, given near-term demand concerns and the risk of competition increasing in the industry.
Ministries such as road transport and heavy industries are learnt to have objected to NITI Aayog's attempts to become an implementing body for the EV programme.
Automobile (auto) retail sales in India grew by an impressive 14 per cent in July compared to the same period last year, driven by a surge in the rural economy, good product availability, and product launches. While passenger vehicles (PVs) saw a 10 per cent increase during this period, inventory levels have surged to a historic high of 67-72 days in PVs, equating to Rs 73,000 crore worth of stock, according to the Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations (Fada). This poses a risk to dealer sustainability. Inventory levels in July 2023 were only 50-55 days, equating to a stock worth Rs 49,833 crore. In June 2024, inventory was between 62 and 67 days, with a stock value of Rs 60,000 crore.
Leading two-wheeler maker Hero MotoCorp is going full throttle to launch a Harley-Davidson model with retro styling as it looks to enter a very profitable segment in the premium motorcycle space, according to a senior company official. The alliance between Hero and Harley-Davidson fructified last year after the iconic US two-wheeler maker announced discontinuation of sales and manufacturing operations in India, a decade after it started selling its premium bikes in the country. "There are two legs to the Harley tie up strategy. One of course is that we are the sales distributors for Harley bikes in India.
Electric vehicle (EV) sales in India topped the 1 million mark in less than nine months in 2023, a milestone that took an entire year in 2022. According to data from the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways' Vahan Dashboard, 1,037,011 EVs were registered with regional transport offices till September 19, accounting for 6.4 per cent of the total automobile sales in the country this year. The sales surge can be attributed to increased individual purchases as well as business-to-business (B2B) acquisitions by EV fleet operators, industry sources said.
'Wherever the government has provided incentives for the purchase of two-wheelers, three-wheelers, cars, buses, and trucks, it gets a push for most of these alternate fuels. '
Truck movements across the India-Bangladesh border are on the rise, with increasing rentals signalling a trade recovery between the two South Asian nations. Yet, geopolitical tension looms large, with Bangladesh now under an interim government for nearly two months.
Kunal Shah has funded over 266 startups including Razorpay, Snapdeal, Zetwork, BlueSmart, Unacademy, Bliss Club, and Spinny, amongst others.
German Car maker Audi plans to offer cars that can do 400 km on a single charge, says Ajay Modi.
EV players suggest a reduction in the goods and services tax on batteries from 18 to 5 per cent as it would help push demand.
Ola Electric will roll out its complete offering of electric scooters and motorcycles in each segment of the market - premium, mass premium, and economical - in the next 12 months in a bid to push for a near-full conversion of the two-wheeler market to electric in three years. According to Bhavish Aggarwal, founder and CEO of Ola Electric, "ICE (internal combustion engine) products will fall off a cliff." He also says the company is aiming to become profitable next year.
US-based chipmaker Micron Technology is expecting demand for semiconductors to rise significantly in the next few years, globally and in India, as memory consumption is going up, largely driven by the widespread adoption of technologies like artificial intelligence (AI). "Memory consumption is expected to double by the end of the decade and the biggest driver in this is AI. "While it's natural to talk about compute and GPUs (graphics processing units) in the context of AI, it is not to be forgotten that the true enabler for AI is memory ... in all the AI engines that we talk about, there is a lot of need to access memory quickly," Anand Ramamoorthy, managing director, Micron Technology India, told Business Standard.
The electric vehicle market in India needs a policy push that goes beyond targets, says Vandana Gombar.
Passenger vehicle sales in India kicked off on a flat note in new fiscal 2024-25 with 3.38 lakh units sold in April, impacted by high base effect and muted demand due to the ongoing general elections. Dispatches of passenger vehicles from manufacturers to dealers were at 338,341 units in April 2024 as compared to 332,468 units in the same month last year, a growth of 1.77 per cent with major players Maruti Suzuki India, Hyundai and Tata Motors reporting marginal growth in their domestic wholesales.
'We are working on both electric scooters and motorcycles.'
The entry of SoftBank-backed Ola into the electric scooter (e-scooter) segment is set to power up the overall market and perhaps fast-track the adoption of battery-operated vehicles. But for manufacturers of internal combustion engine (ICE)-powered two-wheelers, such as Bajaj Auto, Hero MotoCorp, and TVS Motor, it will be a double whammy. Not only will they have to contend with the aggressive pricing of Ola's scooter and incur a loss at each unit of the e-scooter sold, the volumes of their regular (ICE) models, too, could feel the squeeze, observed analysts. Ola is expected to price its e-scooter in the range of Rs 85,000-1.1 lakh.
An EV has to be purchased along with the battery as there are hardly any battery swapping, rental, or leasing business models available across India.
'With NPA under control, we should be able to post better profits.'
The government will create an EV Venture Capital Fund, for financial support to start-ups in the segment. The overall aim is to make Tamil Nadu the preferred destination for EVs and component makers.
The island city, eastern suburbs and western suburbs recorded average 57.63 mm, 76.94 mm and 90.50 mm rainfall, respectively, between 8 am and 6 pm.
At Rs 1.24 lakh, it's the most expensive scooter manufactured in the country but the 450 deserves every penny.
At Prestige Polygon Towers in Chennai's Teynampet, hectic preparations are on for a mega global investors' meet under the aegis of Guidance Tamil Nadu (the state investment promotion agency) scheduled for January 2024. Asked about the key focus areas of the meet, the agency's managing director and chief executive officer, V Vishnu, said the state was betting big on electric mobility. This is no surprise, given that the state has signed electric vehicle (EV)-related memorandums of understanding (MoUs) with several companies in the recent past that may bring in investments worth around Rs 33,000 crore with the potential to create over 43,000 job opportunities.
The $306-million investment in Ola Electric Mobility by SoftBank Corp, Arun Sarin Family, Ratan Tata and Matrix has been the biggest funding in this space in value terms this year.
May invest around $100 mn in setting up a 200-acre park
Bhavish Aggarwal, the founder of ride-hailing firm Ola who disrupted the electric scooters market in the country, is planning to launch an electric sports car in 2024. The plan will put it in competition with Indian players, such as the Tata group and Mahindra & Mahindra, and global giants like Tesla and Hyundai. Aggarwal, recently, took a group of reporters to the firm's design studio at the Ola campus in Bengaluru where his teams are working on several EVs, including scooters, motorcycles, sedans, and SUVs - and even robotaxis.
Earlier in May, Ford India announced that it had dropped its plans to make electric vehicles (EVs) in India, which it intended to export, under the production-linked incentive scheme (PLI). Ford was among 20 companies that had signed a Champion OEM Incentive Scheme under the PLI project with the government in February this year. The decision comes as a blow for the 4,000-odd employees at Ford India's Maraimalai Nagar plant near Chennai and in Sanand, Gujarat. In September last year, the company had announced that it would exit the India market, which it had entered in 1995 through an on-again, off-again joint venture with Mahindra & Mahindra (they split in 1998, signed a JV in 2019 and split again in December 2020), retailing petrol and diesel brands such as the EcoSport, Figo, Aspire, and Endeavour.
The electric Chetak has already sold close to 25,000 units in India, and the European version will be based on the same platform.
The K-shaped economic recovery in India from the pandemic slowdown shows in corporate results as well. The automobile sector, which represents big-ticket consumption, continues to do well and has increased its share in corporate revenues and profits while fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies that sell low-ticket consumer goods are struggling with poor sales and earnings growth. The share of the automobile sector, including makers of auto ancillaries, in corporate net sales rose to a 10-quarter high of 10.05 per cent during July-September 2023 (Q2FY24) from 8.94 per cent a year earlier and 9.75 per cent in Q1FY24.
While commercial vehicles are expected to benefit from strong replacement demand, the two-wheeler and tractor segments are expected to gain from a recovery in the rural economy.
