Electric three-wheeler space heating up, says M&M's Pawan Goenka

India’s electric three-wheeler boom has been as unorganised as it has been rapid. But a few established automakers are looking to be part of this revolution in the Indian three-wheeler market, dominated currently by many small, unorganised players. These attempts, however, have so far come in the form of small pilot projects in various cities and haven’t taken off in a significant way as the market still favouring upstarts and small manufacturing units. Mahindra & Mahindra has often called the electrification of three-wheelers a ‘low-hanging fruit’ and is currently the only market player in the li-ion autorickshaw space, and also manufactures lead-acid battery-run three-wheelers. CNBC-TV18’s Alisha Sachdev caught up with Pawan Goenka, MD and CEO, Mahindra & Mahindra to understand how the company is navigating this electric road.

Amongst the various segments, the segment that is most ready in terms of commercial viability for electrification is the three-wheeler segment. In Treo, our internal calculations show the owner-operator could make Rs 2,000-3,000 more per month in terms of savings than they could in ICE or CNG/LPG type of engine. Therefore, we’re ready in terms of commercial viability, now the question is a pick-up in demand. Fortunately, there are many small initiatives happening throughout the country. SmartE is happening in Delhi, on a somewhat bigger scale than many others. We would probably be announcing few more tie-ups in a couple of weeks, three weeks in diff cities in India and when the FAME-II came for a while we had to get into re-registration because the old registration wasn’t valid and some new rules were defined… so we lost a month-month and a half in that process and then now we’re restarting.

The interest in three-wheelers is very high and right now among the traditional players, I think M&M is the only player which has launched Li-ion autos. There are some Li-ion rickshaws by another player but autos only by one. There are many unorganised players, new players which have come into this. Every week or ten days I see an announcement of a new player jumping into it. So it’s a new game that’s there. The number of three-wheelers that gets sold in India is 50,000 a month (ICE engines). That’s a very large number. Right now we’ve sold a sum total of 1000, and we’re doing 300-400 a month now. We have the capacity for a thousand a month, we can easily go up to two-thousand a month and we can with some lead time go to any number that’s required.