Vehicle manufacturer Mahindra has ruled out introducing electric vehicles for the Australian market, citing a lack of government incentives and overwhelming costs.
Mahindra’s history with electric vehicles stretches back eight years, ahead of many traditional automakers, but the brand’s chief of international operations Arvind Mathew confirmed the focus would remain on traditional petrol and diesel light-commercial vehicles.
“We do electric cars, but I don’t think Australia is ready for electric because the kind of incentives you have to offset the high cost of batteries is not enough.” Mathew recently told Australian journalists.
Meanwhile Mahinda will also continue its work within the Formula E electric racing category, as it helps to continue its work contributing towards future road vehicles.
“We believe that investing in Formula E has its benefits, because the race-to-road concept. Whatever is proven or disproven on the track can feed into production three to four years later.” Mathew said.“Creating the technology that will flow into future cars and products is also a big benefit of formula E.”
The lack of incentive for dealers, manufacturers and consumers continues to be an overwhelming industry problem. Without realistic price ranges and better development of EV technologies, Australia efforts to reduce vehicle emissions will continue to flounder.
Earlier this year the Electric Vehicle Council of Australia chief executive Behyad Jafari called for greater subsidies to encourage electric vehicle take up.
“[There is] certainly a need for governments to intervene in the market and … direct the market towards better outcomes,” he said.
“It’s certainly taken much longer than we would have hoped. We would like to see a recommendation be implemented as soon as possible so we can start preparing for the next part, which is additional support for electric vehicles,” he said.
