Mahindra to enter US market with Reva

A senior Mahindra official announced that the Indian manufacturer is aiming to enter the US market within the next 5 years with the launch of Reva electric cars. Mr R Chandramouli, Operations Chief, Mahindra Reva cars, said, “US is an important and big market for electric vehicles. We are looking at that market. We will be there before our target of full global presence in next five years, but exactly when, that we have not decided yet.”

Mahindra & Mahindra were supposed to launch their SUV segment first, in the US, but that launch has hit a roadblock as their distributor in US delayed launch. Currently Mahindra is fighting a legal battle with that distributor in a US court. Global Vehicles (GV), the US dealer claims to have invested $103.5 million in order to launch Scorpio in US, but due to Mahindra’s negligence, they were not able to launch the pick-up truck and so they sued Mahindra in court.

US Government offers a discount of $7,500 to citizens who buy electric cars. Mahindra thinks that because of this, there would be a huge rise in demand for electric vehicles within the next 5 years. Mr Chandramouli added, “We want to be present across the globe in the next five years, apart from our current operations in the Europe and India. We have some plan to try and bring the template in the US. By template I mean, to run pilot operations for creating new models of electric vehicle transportation. We hope to scale up those models in the US and India.”

Reva manufactured their first electric car in 2001 and till date they have managed to sell 3700 such units. Around 1000 Reva electric cars are currently operational on the roads of London and Mumbai.