(Bloomberg) — BMW plans to expand into India’s emerging electric car market in a bid to win over wealthy consumers in the world’s most populous country amid blank energy development.
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The German automaker expects electric vehicles to account for 25% of its sales in the country by 2025, Vikram Pawah, president of the company’s India business said in an interview at the Bharat Mobility Global Expo on Friday. It sold 1,474 electric cars in 2023, making up 10% of its total sales in the country.
BMW, which brought battery-powered cars to India last year, has lately sold five electrified models, the most of any automaker.
Although the Indian EV market is growing, its size is small. Price-conscious consumers are reluctant to buy expensive subsidies for battery-powered cars, especially given the limited availability of charging stations. Electric cars accounted for just 2. 3% of total passenger cars sold last year. year, according to BloombergNEF.
Still, global automakers are showing interest in India’s nascent EV market, as demand for EVs slows in Europe and the U. S. after a few years of growth.
For Volkswagen AG, EVs will be the “main focus” this year, Ashish Gupta, brand director at the company’s passenger cars division in India, said in an interview at the same event. The carmaker will initially bring fully-built electrified units into the country, and later assemble more premium EVs. It will make EVs locally only after the inflection point is reached, around 2026, he said.
Elon Musk said last year that Tesla Inc. would likely make a “significant investment” in India and planned to travel to the country this year.
BMW plans to launch 16 cars in India by 2024 and expand its dealer network to 4 more cities in 3 years, compared to the existing 35. BMW has no plans to invest in more plants at the moment, Pawah said.
(Updates with call for electric vehicles in the fifth paragraph. A previous edition corrected the last name in the second paragraph. )
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