Hyundai Motor India Ltd (HMIL) will be launching an electric SUV Kona by 2019 under the CKD format. As the cost in developing an EV in India is quite high, the company will be looking for collaboration with like-minded partners.
The company is also expected to expand its production capacity to 7,00,000 units per annum in 2018 and 7,50,000 units by 2019.
YK Koo, MD and CEO of Hyundai India said to Financial Express, “In line with the Indian government’s vision on EVs, we have decided to introduce EVs in India. As part of the EV strategy, the company will launch an EV SUV by second half of 2019 under the completely knocked down (CKD) format. Based on the response for the product and as well on the progress on EV infrastructure in India, we will launch a slew of models going forward.”
Koo also mentioned about collaboration with Kia Motors, “We are open to collaborations, including Kia Motors, as the cost will be high when developing independently. We will forge a tie-up with right kind of partners as EV requires lot of components, including batteries, charging parts, etc.” “In the long term, we want to make EVs in India from our Chennai plant. However, a lot depends on the government’s policy, tax structures as well infra development,” Koo added.
About future expansion, he said, “Given the import tariff benefits, markets such as Vietnam, South America, Africa, Algeria and the Phillippines have decided to import cars under the CKD format against CBUs now. By exporting under CKD, HMIL gets an additional production capacity of minimum of 50,000 units by 2019 which would become sufficient for us to take care of both domestic and exports, at least till 2020. Some of our export markets are also slowing down due to various reasons, hence we have enough capacity till 2020.”
