EVs show technological superiority, but cost and charging hurdles persist: M&M's Anish Shah

Anish Shah, the Group Managing Director and CEO of Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) said on Wednesday that electric vehicles (EVs) hold a definitive advantage over internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles, primarily due to their superior technology, nil emissions, enhanced fuel efficiency, and lower operational costs.

Speaking at the Zetwerk Smart Manufacturing Summit, Shah said, "EV is a far better technology than ICE. Emissions are nonexistent; you have much greater fuel efficiency, though, it's effectively close to zero cost in the sense of operating costs that you would have for an EV. Servicing an EV is much easier."

Despite these strengths, the CEO noted that EVs still face challenges, notably the need for cost parity with ICE vehicles and the widespread availability of charging infrastructure.

"First, the cost needs to be at parity with ICE because folks don't want to pay more. The second is that charging has to be available everywhere. That is what we are seeing as a challenge today, and even in the US, there are a number of issues around charging not being available," Shah noted.

In the automotive sector, Shah pointed out that M&M had doubled its capacity over the last two years. He emphasised the company's commitment to technology and innovation, particularly in the electric vehicle (EV) space, where M&M plans to scale up its operations significantly.

"At the same time, there have been some segments where there has been a lot of investment in the auto business at Mahindra, we have doubled our capacity in the last two years and it wasn't an easy decision to say we got to double capacity in the face of the world slowing down, inflation, potential recessions, etc," Shah said.

Touching upon the company's foray into aerospace and defense sectors, Shah said, "In defence, we are focused on a very specific segment, which is around security solutions, which is around transport etc. We don't play in the what I call offense-related aspects of defence because ammunitions etc., areas we do not want to get into."

"But again, here we see tremendous potential in armoured vehicles that we have been supplying to the government for some time now. Atmanirbharta is essential in defense and that's where we will see the industry grow," he said.

Moreover, the CEO discussed M&M's ambitious solar business, noting the company's consideration to surpass its original targets. "Solar is one that already is growing rapidly, we had set a 5x target for our solar business.

And we are now looking at it and saying, should it be 7x 10x? We just had a discussion in the last few days saying should we really take this targets up higher because we are growing at a much faster pace than we had expected and I can go on," Shah said.