Mahindra and Uber have joined hands to deploy electric vehicles in India. The pilot project will see 100s of EVs making it into the Uber fleet. The e2O Plus and the eVerito will be inducted into the Uber fleet by the beginning of March 2018. At first, the cars will be available only in Delhi and Hyderabad and can be booked via the Uber App. This is a pilot project and the details of the number of vehicles to be inducted is yet to be finalised.
The first EVs will hit the roads from March 2018
Both the companies have made it clear that this is not an exclusive deal as Mahindra has already tied up with Ola to introduce an EV fleet in Nagpur a few months ago. Speaking on collaboration Dr. Pawan Goenka, Managing Director, Mahindra and Mahindra said, "As the pioneers of electric vehicles in the country, we would like to be at the forefront, leading this change toward smart and sustainable mobility solutions. Our collaboration with Uber is an important step to help accelerate the large scale adoption of electric vehicles on shared mobility platforms, and meet the nation's vision for EVs"
Mahindra will also support with Driver education and training related to various aspects of electric vehicles. The company has plans to ramp up its EV production from 100 vehicles per month to 1000 per month in the next six months. The company further plans to up the production to 5000 vehicles per month by the end of 2019.
The pilot project will first be started in Delhi and Hyderabad
But the main issue to be sorted out is the charging infrastructure and 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.
