Chennai, Sep 6 (IANS): The Rs 54,722 crore turnover Murugappa Group launched its electric three wheeler on Tuesday and will introduce the electric heavy commercial vehicle next year, said a senior group official.
The group will also soon launch electric tractor and electric three-wheeled cargo carriers and also leverage the synergies that exist within.
"The electric heavy commercial vehicle is being homologated. The truck will be launched next year. Similarly, the electric tractor is also undergoing homologation," Executive Chairman, Tube Investments, Arun Murugappan, told IANS.
The Rs 12,060 crore Tube Investments' wholly-owned subsidiary TI Clean Mobility Private Ltd is the group's corporate vehicle in the electric automobile segment.
As an extension of the electric three wheelers, the TI Clean Mobility will come out with cargo carrier models this December or next January, Managing Director Kalyan Kumar Paul said.
About the passenger carrying electric three-wheelers, Paul said the company has a production capacity of 75,000 vehicles and initially the vehicles will be sold in the five southern states.
According to him, in two years time, the company will break even.
Branded as Montra, the TI Clean Mobility has three variants of three wheelers - soft top (price Rs 3.02 lakh), hard top (Rs 3.10 lakh) and long range (Rs 3.43 lakh)
Murugappan said the initial outlay for the electric three wheeler business is about Rs 200 crore.
TI Clean Mobility has a 70 per cent stake in the Hyderabad based Cellestial E-Mobility that makes electric tractors. The stake was acquired for Rs 161 crore.
An electric tractor plant is being set up near here by Cellestial E-Mobility.
Similarly, TI Clean Mobility's foray into electric heavy trucks is through acquisition of majority stakes in the Rs 1.28 lakh equity-based IPLTech Private Ltd.
With this, TI Clean Mobility plans to add electric trucks to its existing portfolio of electric three wheelers and tractors.
TI Clean Mobility will acquire the majority stake in the Rs 13 crore revenue IPLTech by combination of share purchase from the equity shareholders (Rs 96 crore) and fresh infusion of equity (Rs 150 crore).
The acquisition is expected to be completed on or before October 31 this year.
According to Paul, there are synergies that exist between the group's various companies and electric vehicle company TI Clean Mobility.
For instance, the group company CG Power and Industrial Solutions makes big motors now. But in future the company may play a major role in TI Clean Mobility.