No hybrid stepping-stone for Mahindra

MAHINDRA will not offer petrol-electric or diesel-electric hybrid models in Australia – instead, the brand is going to step straight from internal combustion engines (ICE) to electric vehicles (EV).

The Indian company is in the midst of a global product push that is set to include five new EVs in the next five years or so, and Australia is slated to be an important market for at least some of those new electric models, all of which seem likely to be SUVs - perhaps including coupe-style sports SUVs to broaden the appeal of the line-up.

The brand says, however, it could feasibly make hybrid models a reality if it needed to or wanted to, but as a company, it wants to push straight to the next step. This is not an unusual move for a business from a developing nation –  India as a whole skipped Euro 5 emissions standards altogether, for instance, jumping from Euro 4 to Euro 6 in one fell swoop.

Indeed, as Veejay Nakra, president of automotive for Mahindra, put it - the brand will launch its new-generation vehicles with EV as the priority.

Asked if the brand had thought to go down the well-trodden and proven-popular hybrid powertrain path that Toyota has dominated, Mr Nakra said that while possible, the hybrid idea doesn’t fit with the brand’s future plans.

“We can technically make a hybrid on the ICE platform. But as an organisation, our next step of powertrain shift is from ICE to EVs,” said Mr Nakra.

“So just to calibrate that they are born electric and not electrified. Electrified will mean you just take an ICE platform and you just put some batteries on it. And you're, you know, wherever the floor space allows you, you package batteries to try and create an electric vehicle, the XUV E8 and the XUV E9, both of them would be on a Born Electric platform, so I just wanted to put that in perspective,” he said.

“We had said that there would be two XUV models and three BE (Born Electric) models,” he said. “Which of those we will bring into Australia? That's exactly what we are understanding from a market point of view from segmentation point of view, and which of those would be appropriate for Australia as a market.

They range from five-seater, seven-seater, sports car-designed, to, you know, more space-utilised EV SUV, up to a fastback. So, at the moment, we're evaluating those options. And then we will take a call on which of those would be more appropriate for Australia and then we will bring those into this market,” said Mr Nakra.

“I'm calling them born electric, and hence, the INGLO platform is a modern electric platform,” he said of the skateboard-style architecture that will underpin the new-generation range of EV models from Mahindra, which has been reported as being a co-developed platform between VW and Mahindra.

But Mr Nakra insisted that the new platform is Mahindra’s work, with some VW-sourced parts.

“It's developed by us,” he said. “We've got a component-supplier agreement with Volkswagen, so we are only taking certain components, we are not taking their platform, the platform is ours.

“We are only taking batteries and motors and certain other electronic components on our platform, but the platform is ours, and it's not a co-developed platform,” he said.

Mr Nakra stated that no matter which models end up being sold in Australia, the company will aim to offer value and quality above all else.

“I'm just going back to the question, what is the brand? What does our brand stand for? Our brand has always stood for giving higher value to our consumers. That's why I always say that we give features, technology, and experiences that a product at a price point one or two levels above us would offer.

“So that's what the brand stands for, and that's what we would continue to offer. So they will be very competitively priced, excellent EVs with high performance and great features and the whole UI UX experience,” he said.

Mahindra’s product push is currently being spearheaded by the XUV700 petrol seven-seater SUV, and the Scorpio diesel six-seat 4WD SUV. Those two models have both launched locally in the past two months, living up to the notion of value for money with aggressive introductory nationwide drive-away pricing.

The company has also made it clear that it needs a new-generation ute to further enhance its stake in the Australian market, and such a vehicle - likely to comprise single- and dual-cab, 4x2 and 4x4 models with diesel and possibly EV power - will launch locally around 2027.