‘Born Electric’ is a term Mahindra has given its cars that have been designed with electricity as the propulsion mode. For now, Mahindra informed us, the plan is to have only one ‘born electric’ car that showcases Mahindra’s electric powertrains. This makes sense as development costs for all new vehicles are extremely high and, in the future, platforms with multiple powertrain options will be the way to go. The e2o Plus is the current 'born electric' car and will carry on being updated as usual. An immediate update will be regarding safety. The company told us that the body structure was already crashworthy and will only need the addition of airbags and ABS to comply with the safety norms coming in later this year. The previous two-door version of the e2o is now no longer available for the domestic market and Mahindra will make these cars in very limited quantities for certain export markets only.

A big challenge for Mahindra is that none of its mainstream models were conceived with electric power in mind and are just too heavy for effective electrification and require a lot of lightweighting and packaging work. However, with the electric powertrain expertise increasing in-house, future Mahindra vehicles and platforms will be designed from the outset with the option of electric power. This will enable quicker launch of electric versions and the vehicles themselves will have better performance and range under electric power. Additionally, with platforms being compatible with different propulsion systems, Mahindra will be immune to possible changes in the market conditions.

Being the only EV maker in India, Mahindra Electric has good reason to be bullish about the future but, sadly, not much has transpired commercially so far and competitors are waiting in the wings. Multinationals like the Nissan Group have publicly stated their intentions to have low-cost EVs in India; Tesla is aiming to have its EVs selling in India as early as this year, and home-grown Tata has electric vehicle development underway. Mahindra does have over 260 million kilometres of EV running across India and two good building blocks in the form of the Formula electric race team and Pininfarina. But the company must now bring it all together quickly if it wants to be the leading player in the field of electrification and electric vehicles.