Mahindra’s 4-seater electric vehicle to hit market soon

Mahindra & Mahindra has developed an electric version of its half-tone minivan Gio Cab, named NXR. Manu P Toms reports

Mahindra & Mahindra has developed an electric version of its half-tone minivan Gio Cab, named NXR. The new electric van follows the one-tonne Maxximo electric van, which M&M had developed some time ago.

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Both these products have significant inputs from Mahindra Reva, the electric carmaker that came into the M&M fold in May 2010. Since then, M&M is working on building on a strong electric vehicle portfolio. Reva’s ‘full-fledged’ four-seater electric car NXR will soon hit the market.

The new car is expected to take the electric carmaker’s annual sales volume to above 5000 units.

However, low penetration of charging stations and minute market opportunity has made company vary of commercially launching its battery-run minivans.

"We have developed prototypes of Maxximo and Gio. However, we have not decided on launching them in the market," Pawan Goenka, president, auto and farm equipment sector, M&M, told Hindustan Times.

About the hybrid version of Scorpio, Goenka said, "We are developing a hybrid vehicle. But we cannot tell you which platform we will use for hybrid," hinting possibilities that hybrid vehicle could come up even on the upcoming XUV500 platform.

Most of the variants of Mahindra’s utility vehicle range — Bolero, Scorpio, Xylo and the upcoming XUV500 — use start-stop technology, what Mahindra calls ‘micro hybrid,’ which ensures 5% fuel saving.