Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. and Uber have entered into a strategic alliance for deployment of electric vehicles in the latter’s fleet in India.
The alliance envisages supply of Mahindra’s electric vehicles, financing of the vehicles from Mahindra Finance, as well as insurance, maintenance and other services to ensure a viable proposition for Uber’s driver partners, the firms said in a joint statement. The goal was to build ‘next generation, sustainable solutions in the shared mobility space’.
The initiative would be flagged off with ‘hundreds of Mahindra’s electric vehicles in Hyderabad and New Delhi in Phase I, followed by other cities’. The first batch of electric vehicles for the Uber fleet would be rolled out by March 2018, top company executives said. Deliveries would include the e2oPlus hatch and the eVerito sedan models.
“Our collaboration with Uber is an important next step to help accelerate the large-scale adoption of electric vehicles on shared mobility platforms,” said Pawan Goenka, managing director, Mahindra & Mahindra.
He said electric vehicle adoption was clearly gaining momentum in India and as ‘pioneers of electric vehicles in the country, Mahindra would like to be at the forefront’, leading the change towards ‘sustainable mobility’. Mahindra had supplied 300 electric vehicles to Ola driver partners in Nagpur and the cars had clocked 1 million km in five months.
Electric vehicle orders
Mahindra, which has so far sold 4,000 electric vehicles in the country, is also supplying to EESL which is in the process of procuring 10,000 electric vehicles for government departments. The alliance with Uber is to further push electric mobility in the country.
“This is a pilot project,” said Madhu Kannan, chief business officer, Uber India & Emerging Markets. “Based on our learning, we will deploy more electric vehicles in these two cities and other cities in the next phase.”
“Aligned with the government’s vision, we aim to build a more sustainable future of mobility, moving more people needing on-demand services,” he said .
“We see a key role for high efficiency vehicle technologies,” Mr. Kannan added.
To make this business model sustainable, Mahindra and Uber will work closely with public and private players who are in the process of setting up a common use charging ecosystem across multiple locations in the cities.
Mahindra will also support with driver education and training related to various aspects of electric vehicles.
