Monday, February 18, 2019
By Kamal Swami
Volvo Also Stepping In The Business Of Electric Vehicles
Sweden based extravagant car maker Volvo is speculating to step in the production of electric vehicles in the Indian car market. With increasing concern of pollution free environment and with all major car makers also working on introducing the electric versions of the upcoming vehicles, the Swedish carmaker is also reported to introduce its first electric vehicle soon in India.
According to the reports received from the sources of Volvo, it has started assembling the components of its first ever hybrid vehicle that would be launched during the later months of this year. The company also plans to extend the portfolio of its electric and hybrid vehicles half a dozen till 2021 in the Indian car market. It would be interesting that with an objective to encourage the use of electric vehicles, the government of India had minimized the import duties on components of the electric vehicles recently.
Commenting on this Mr. Charles Frump, MD, Volvo Car India said, “It was a big announcement from the government with the customs duty reduction for battery electric vehicle (components). Immediately after we heard about this customs reduction, I jumped on a phone to Sweden to start talking about what we can do for India”
The Sweden car maker had started its production activities for the Indian car market last year near Bengaluru, to launch its products with a competitive price tag. And, now with the availability of the production unit is believed to help the company in minimizing the prices of its electric and hybrid vehicles also, as compared to the vehicles manufactured by others.
Apart, from Volvo, its German rival Audi is also going to launch its electric car E-Tron in India by the end of this year. Along with this, the other manufacturers like domestic carmaker Mahindra and Mahindra is also going to launch the electric version of its recently launched compact SUV XUV300 in India. The bandwagon is also reported to be joined by the Indo-Japanse car makers Maruti Suzuki India Limited which is working on launching the electric variant of next-generation WagonR.
