India’s electric vehicle (EV) market has been waiting for a catalyst to turbocharge sales growth. Maruti Suzuki believes it may have finally supplied one.
The country’s largest carmaker unveiled the e-Vitara this week, its first electric model for the Indian market, while announcing a sweeping EV ecosystem that includes 2,000 exclusive charging points across 1,100 cities, tie-ups with 13 charge-point operators, and an ambition to enable more than 100,000 public chargers by 2030. The launch signals a turning point for a company that sat out during the early phase of India’s electric transition, choosing to go the hybrid way instead.
The question for the industry is whether this is the moment history tries to repeat itself.
Maruti has done this before. It entered the diesel passenger-car market well after rivals, but once it arrived—with a ready engine and an after-sales network capable of handling the technology—it became the dominant player. More recently, it waited out the early SUV frenzy, choosing to scale only when it had a product portfolio and supply chain that fit its volume-first philosophy. It now leads that market in the entry segment and plans to be the biggest player in the mid-size SUV segment with the launch of the Victoris. It does not operate in the premium SUV segment.
The company is betting a similar pattern may unfold in EVs, a segment that has grown quickly off a small base but still makes up for only 5 percent of total car sales in India. Most buyers remain price-sensitive and anxious about range and inadequate charging infrastructure.
Maruti is positioning the e-Vitara—and the infrastructure around it—as its answer to those anxieties.
“We aim to enter with full readiness in terms of the product and the ecosystem,” managing director & CEO Hisashi Takeuchi said at an event. He said the car was engineered to minimise typical hurdles to EV adoption.
The vehicle promises an estimated 543 km on a single charge and has been tested in temperatures from 60° C to -30° C, across roads from “sand to snow”.
The model has already gone on sale in the UK and heads to Japan next month. It will be launched in India in 2026.
Maruti’s insistence on preparation extended well beyond the car. It has spent Rs250 crore on charging infrastructure across its dealer network and on its “e for me” app, which lets customers locate, pay for and access charging points, whether at home or at public stations, through a unified interface. The company has also made more than 1,500 of its workshops EV-ready and trained a 1.5-lakh-person workforce in handling high-voltage systems.
Partho Banerjee, senior executive office for marketing and sales, said this ecosystem-first approach was shaped in part by lessons from rivals. “Early adopters of EVs had a bad experience,” he said, pointing to after-sales problems, unreliable charging and range issues. Maruti deliberately moved slower, he added, because “this is the right way to launch a product”.
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Maruti, in contrast, has maintained a technology-agnostic stance. It sells internal-combustion engine (ICE) cars, CNG models, strong hybrids and flex-fuel variants, and will now add EVs to the menu. Banerjee said the company wasn’t chasing immediate market-share leadership. “For most customers, total cost of ownership is a bigger driver than tech,” he said, citing small-town contractors who buy EVs for running-cost savings rather than any enthusiasm for electrification.
The company’s Gujarat plant can produce 100,000 e-Vitaras annually, underscoring that Maruti expects demand to rise sharply once the market shifts.
The EV market may not tip overnight. But Maruti’s track record suggests that when the company finally commits to a category, India’s car buyers eventually follow. With EV sales still waiting for their critical mass, this might be the gravitational force the market has been missing.
First Published: Dec 04, 2025, 18:47
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