The Lourensford wine estate on the outskirts of Cape Town, South Africa is incredibly pretty. Sheltered by some of the oldest mountains in the world, the estate produces some of the finest wine. But on India’s Independence Day, the venue was buzzing for a different reason. India’s leading maker of utility vehicles, Mahindra Automotive, had just unveiled the Thar.E, an electric off-road concept vehicle, carrying the name of its best-selling lifestyle off-roader, the Thar.
At first look, it is a very dramatic vehicle and one completely removed from the Jeep-based heritage of the Thar. Though this is a concept, Pratap Bose, Mahindra’s design honcho, made it clear that the final vehicle will look “at least 85-90 per cent like the concept.” And to prove the point, a few minutes later, the company teased the production-ready version of the BE05 electric sports utility vehicle, which they had ‘teased’ in the United Kingdom last year along with a few other cars.
But the Thar.E proves that Mahindra’s ambition of being an electric vehicle manufacturer is not just limited to their ‘Born Electric’ new cars. “In the coming years, along with the Thar.E, there will be electrified versions of the Scorpio and Bolero too,” Vijay Nakra, President, Automotive Sector, Mahindra & Mahindra announced. Veluswamy R, Chief of Global Product Development, gave some finer details on Mahindra’s new electric drivetrains and batteries and the intense development of new technologies taking place in the company, including for faster charging and better thermal management. He also gave details on their partnerships with the Volkswagen Group for their INGLO platform as well as more recent tie-up with French manufacturer Valeo for slightly less-powerful electric motors.
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Going global
Mahindra Electric Automobile Limited (MAEL), which recently picked up a Rs 1200-crore investment from Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, Temasek is only looking up. And Rajesh Jejurikar, Executive Director, Auto and Farm sector at Mahindra believes that electric vehicles coupled with Mahindra’s expertise in utility vehicles will give the Mumbai-based manufacturer an opportunity to become a global leader in the space. “I believe our new ‘Infinite Possibilities’ logo for our electric division will be on SUVs all over the world.” A new plant at Mahindra’s Chakan facility is coming up to produce all these new vehicles, including maybe the ‘Thar.E’ and should be operational by next year.
Mahindra doesn’t just want to sell these electric cars in India alone, they want to go global and not just with their electric cars, but also their current line-up and newer products in the internal combustion engine range and agricultural equipment. One major reason the event was hosted in South Africa was because this is one of the carmaker’s largest international markets. In fact, before the Thar.E rolled onto stage, Mahindra had unveiled a new ‘Global Pik-Up’, a dual-cab flatbed truck based on the Scorpio-N, which they intend to sell in South Africa, Australia, Latin America and South-East Asia. Ironically, India might see very few units of this car, if any at all, as the road transport departments in the country classify pick-up trucks as ‘commercial’ vehicles.
Electric ambitions of Mahindra aside, the company clearly realises that its recent success has been due to internal combustion vehicles. The new Thar, which despite being a lifestyle vehicle has sold over 100,000 units in a couple of years, the XUV700 and the Scorpio-N have both also been sales successes. “Let me make it clear, the internal combustion engine is going nowhere. By 2030, we hope to have an impressive line-up of electric vehicles, but internal combustion engine vehicles will still be 70 per cent of our sales,” Nakra said.
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Tilling the agri market
And there was more to why the event was held at a wine estate, other than the obvious ones. Mahindra is also a global leader in agricultural equipment, especially small to medium powered tractors between 20-70 horsepower of output. And they used the opportunity to launch their ‘OJA’ range of tractors in the 20-40 horsepower range. Bose and his design team has spent time on these vehicles, not only improving their looks but also ergonomics by including seemingly obvious (but rare on tractors) features such as a telescopic and tiltable steering column.
But these tractors are highly automated with a whole host of features that might seem blindingly obvious but were not on tractors until now. For example, when a farmer takes a U-turn at the end of a field to plough or spray the next row, on these tractors the tiller or sprayer automatically shuts during the turn. Hemant Sikka, President of the Farm Equipment sector at Mahindra said that making life easier for the farmer will help them improve their productivity and crucially the yield. “In India, we have to catch up with yields in paddy cultivation and horticulture, and these new tractors will help our farmers improve their yields.”
But it isn’t just India, the world’s largest small and medium tractor market, where Mahindra is already the market leader. They want to take ‘OJA’ global. “Brazil, South-East Asia, South Africa, the United States, we see multiple uses for our tractors. On wine-estates like this, the high degree of automation and its small size, will help wine growers. In the United States, there is a growing market of ‘hobby farmers’, people who own five-ten acres outside a city and want to grow their own crops, fruits and veggies, these are perfect for them,” Sikka tells me.
And guess what, while Mahindra only let us walk around around the Thar.E and Global Pik-Up, they actually let us have a go on the tractors too. And well, I am no tractor expert, but I’ve driven a few over the years and Mahindra has really made the OJA much easier to operate than tractors before. And even though the Chairman of the company, Anand Mahindra, wasn’t around, you can sense his vision to take his name global at work.
In fact, as a convoy of 60 Mahindra vehicles drove down the Cape Peninsula to the Cape of Good Hope the next day, it caught the attention of bystanders. While on a personal note, this was one of my most scenic drives ever, it won’t be just South Africa where the Mahindra name will ring strongly if the company keeps going strong.
@kushanmitra is an automotive journalist based in New Delhi. Views are personal.
(Edited by Anurag Chaubey)