Tata, MG Motor Offer Free Charging To Lure EV Buyers

NEW DELHI, (REUTERS) – India’s top electric vehicle maker, Tata Motors, is luring consumers with free charging and steep discounts, while rival MG Motor has launched its first battery rental plan, in strategies aimed at propping up sales of the clean cars.

Use of electric vehicles has grown rapidly in recent years to account for 2% of India’s annual sales of 4.2 million cars, but sales growth is now faltering, which analysts blame on high prices and lack of charging facilities.

“We want to make electric vehicles affordable,” Satinder Singh Bajwa, chief commercial officer of MG Motor, said at an event to launch the firm’s new EV with a battery rental service, the world’s first of its kind.

The firm is a joint venture of India’s JSW Group and China’s SAIC.

These efforts are sorely needed. India’s biggest EV maker, Tata Motors sold just 4,086 EVs in August, down nearly 15% from a year earlier, in a fourth successive month of annual decline in the world’s third-largest auto market.

Indians prefer gasoline and diesel vehicles as charging stations are far and few between, despite a government push to boost sales of clean cars.

While sales of e-scooters have rocketed, fueled by high demand from e-commerce companies, annual sales of electric cars still languish at fewer than 100,000.

That has not deterred the likes of MG Motor, BYD, BMW and Mercedes-Benz from launching their versions, many priced to attract the growing numbers of India’s rich and affluent.