New Delhi: Chinese electric vehicle company BYD is setting its sights on a potential boom in the Indian EV market and exploring contract manufacturing partnerships to build passenger electric vehicles in the country, a top company executive said.
The company has announced its third EV for the market -- Seal, a sedan that rivals Tesla Model 3, is slated for a festive season launch in the third quarter of this year. This will take the company’s portfolio to 3 cars, including the Atto 3 SUV & the E6. The cars will be assembled in India in an SKD (semi-knocked down) operation. Deliveries of the first set of Atto 3 cars began this week. It is utilizing its existing electronics factory in Chennai for its EV manufacturing operations.
“We have a manufacturing capacity of upto 15,000 units annually. We have already doubled shifts at the plant. We’ll see how the demand is beyond this volume. In the second phase we will explore new facilities for manufacturing because, looking at the initial interest which has developed, we are hopeful demand will be strong. So we want to stabilise our operations, showcase our technology and then in the meantime parallelly work on our second phase of expansion new products, which will happen post this 15,000 volume," Sanjay Gopalakrishnan, Senior Vice President, EV Business, BYD India said.
“We are exploring a lot of contract manufacturing options. Our technology is regarded as the best in the world, so we need to find a partner who can build products under this technology, that’s also very important. I think that we will find a long-term suitable partner who can help us go along with us like we did in buses with Olectra."
Gopalakrishnan feels the EV industry will enter a more stable growth phase 2025 onwards, as improvement in the charging infrastructure spurs greater adoption.
“We have already taken a decision that India is going to be major market for BYD South Asia. Among markets like Japan, Singapore, Thailand, Philippines, India will be a major volume market because volumes here are growing and we have already started planning for it. Our ambition is to have at least 40% EV market share," Gopalakrishnan said.
Gopalakrishnan said an optimistic estimate of the country’s electric PV population by 2030 is at a 30% penetration in a market that would have grown to 5.5 million units annually, which translates to over 1 lakh EVs in a month. Currently, annual EV sales hover close to the 35,000z-40,000 units range.
“Even if we achieve 20-25% penetration, it’s a big number for India. By 2025 we will see a lot of EV options and that’s when customers will have more choices and they’ll start to seriously consider EVs as their second car or primary car," he said.
