Finally the giant has awaken! Maruti today said that it will roll out electric cars in India in next four to five years.“We are developing electric car technology for India. But it might take us up to the next five years or more to manufacture and sell electric cars in the domestic market,” said Maruti Suzuki Managing Director Shinzo Nakanishi. Nakanishi also said that Suzuki’s R&D unit will put in large investments to develop electric cars with larger range (mileage per charge) and affordable price.“Cars available in the domestic market can give, say, 120 km per charge. What they are implying is 120 km for a single passenger — which means the power is sufficient for the driver of the car alone,” said Nakanishi. “If another passenger joins, the travel range per charge drops to 60 km. If a third persons sits behind the range drops to 30 km. We are trying to address the longer range of driving in our R&D work,” he explained. On pricing, Nakanishi said, “You have Honda and Toyota, which have proven, commercially viable hybrid technology cars. But internationally, they sell in small volumes. Globally, Suzuki is known as a low-cost car manufacturer selling in large volumes. We would like to achieve that for electric cars in India.”
Maruti Suzuki which currently sells LPG variant of 800 and Wagon-R is also looking at CNG for some of its models. “We are working on multi-fuel variants and some models have been identified for CNG. A CNG kit currently costs over Rs 40,000 and that is expensive. Also, these cars can only be launched in 2010 or 2011, when there is a pan-India CNG filling system from companies like Reliance.”Maruti Suzuki Chairman R C Bhargava said.