EV Opportunity Not For Legacy Carmakers — Samir Arora Invokes Honda-Nissan Merger For Cautious Call

Helios Capital's Samir Arora has called the electric vehicle opportunity for automobile companies a 'capital guzzling threat and akin to running on a treadmill', in a post on 'X'.

Taking a dig at Honda and Nissan, he said that they "cannot handle the EV transition and considering merging to save costs etc". He said that another example of why his team has not liked the auto OEMs for long is that "EV is not an opportunity for these legacy companies, it is a capital guzzling threat and akin to running on a treadmill."

The post further said, "protection" cannot protect you forever and in any case "protected" earnings cannot/should not get the same multiples as free market, sustainable earnings.

Paytm's Vijay Shekhar Sharma also joined the thread and asked, "Why are Japanese car makers so averse to EVs? " and "Why do they keep pushing hybrid or hydrogen but not EVs?"

To this, Arora replied, "U tell us- u are closer to Japanese than we are. (sic)"

Recently, Paytm completed the sale of 5.4% stake, worth over Rs 2,300 crore, which it held in Japan's digital payments company PayPay Corp to its investor SoftBank.

He also shared his take on Tesla in the post and said it "will become less of EV and more of autonomous driving, robot etc play." This was a reply to a comment which had called EV a fad which will fizzle out once Tesla stock takes a fall.