With 30 per cent of its sales volume coming from electric vehicles (EVs), MG Motor is among the leading players in India’s EV market. In a conversation with Aggam Walia, Gaurav Gupta, Chief Growth Officer of MG Motor India, talked about the government’s new EV policy, highlighted nuances in geography-wise sales, and flagged the underutilisation of charging stations. The US has imposed duties on the import of EVs made in China. In India, the government has come up with new rules to allow the import of EVs at lower tariffs, including from countries like China, if companies make domestic greenfield investments. Do you foresee this as a challenge? The best thing for the EV sector is to increase competition because it drives efficiency and gives consumers the best options. It also helps in the overall development of the sector. The moment we bring in more products, we bring in more technology. You have the infrastructure shaping up– charging infrastructure being installed and made more reliable, generation of power from renewables, different price points for the customer– all of this is eventually going to propel the industry. But definitely one would always like to have a level playing field. That is very important. Choice for customers, a level playing field for everybody. That should be the case. And right now, I think the policies are pretty much of that nature. Is there any distinction between EV sales in tier-1 and tier-2 cities in terms of market penetration? Usually we have seen that in the ICE segment, there is a very clear distinction between tier-1 and tier-2 based on purchasing power capabilities, infrastructure, and the disposable income of households. When it comes to EVs, that of course remains as the bedrock, but what also serves as a catalyst for a faster EV adoption are the subsidies that some of the state governments are offering. When you look at the entire EV purchasing process, we are seeing that the adoption of EVs in the south has really raised past the other regions in the country. The southern states, like Tamil Nadu, have been very forthcoming in enabling an environment to have higher adoption of EVs. What happens is that states offer a zero RTO benefit for EV adoption and in certain states they also give you some additional benefits. There are FAME benefits that are there for passenger vehicles pan-India, but when you ask about tier-1 and tier-2, there comes a distinction wherein a particular city would be much higher in terms of volume for ICE vehicles. But when it comes to EVs, it may not be that big because the other tier-2 city would be offering a higher subsidy on EVs and hence it goes further on EV adoption. For example, at one point in time, Delhi-NCR was a larger ICE market than Hyderabad, but Hyderabad was a bigger EV market than Delhi-NCR. Why? Because of the state subsidy, the RTO benefits that were very forthcoming to encourage EV adoption. But with the taxation structure changing in Hyderabad, it becomes different now– Delhi-NCR again takes up a higher volume. For certain cities, obviously tier-2 becoming bigger than tier-1 will not be the case because there is a base level which is always there for buying the vehicles. A lot of the charging infrastructure is coming up in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, and other metro cities. Is that a hindrance? In terms of the DC fast-charging network, the total number of chargers today in the country is somewhere close to about 9,000 chargers. It is not a small number. But within that, about 2,500 to 3,000 are the only ones which can support charging above 30 kW. Now, when you say that they are mostly centred around Delhi or metro cities, in the beginning that was the case but now we are seeing multiple players who have come on board. Whether it is Navratnas like BPCL or some other large private sector players. Nowadays, highway locations are also becoming very attractive for people to top up their chargers. At the same time, while there are a lot of chargers coming up, frankly, the chargers are underutilised right now… people are still not utilising these chargers completely. Why is the usage ratio low– 6 to 7 per cent? Occasional chargers will have a high ratio– there is one in Galleria in Gurgaon it is very well used. There is a Nagpur highway that goes to Bombay and at the bend near Pune, there is a very high usage rate of the charger. But why are others not operating so well? Some people are still debating whether they will be able to charge their car on the highway– the fence-sitters. One who has jumped in knows how to plan their route. Second, for some of the earlier chargers that were put up, there was a reliability factor. When you land up to a charger, it is not working or the local power supply is not there. In the recent past, such issues have also dampened the confidence of the people who are using it. The movement will happen when more awareness is created and the reliability factor guaranteed. A lot of the work will start to play out as new startup companies come into picture as charging point operators (CPOs), some of whom we’ve partnered with. Do you think the route of technology transfers from other countries will speed up the journey of EV battery localisation? There are multiple ways. One is of course technology transfer. Second is our own academia and our own R&D to pace up here. I think the various stakeholders have to really step up and play their bit in this game because no industry without the help of R&D and academia can really grow. We have tied up with educational institutes under a program called MG Nurture wherein we have been offering EV batteries to various colleges across the country. We should be close to almost 50 colleges by the end of this year wherein we will be partnering with them by providing vehicles to study and get familiar with, and work on autonomous vehicles with R&D centres. The government also has the ACC PLI scheme in place that will help with the pace of R&D and in reducing costs.
