Maruti Suzuki Sees New EV Lifting Green-Car Share Of India Sales To 45%

Maruti Suzuki India Ltd., the country’s largest carmaker, expects the debut of its first all-electric vehicle to boost deliveries of alternative-fuel-powered cars to nearly half its total Indian sales next year. 

The unit of Japan’s Suzuki Motor Corp., which is looking to roll out its new e VITARA subcompact crossover in India from early next year, expects greener vehicles to make up about 45% of its overall sales in the year ending March 2027, Partho Banerjee, Maruti Suzuki’s senior executive officer for marketing and sales, said in an interview near New Delhi. That would mark a jump from about 37% currently, which comes from vehicles powered by compressed natural gas.

Banerjee declined to share the company’s sales target for the e VITARA, which is also the Japanese automaker’s first global EV, but said the car will be positioned as a premium model aimed at younger, digitally-native buyers who seek a more upscale lifestyle. 

Maruti Suzuki has yet to announce pricing for the much-anticipated EV that will be sold in more than 100 Indian cities. Prices for exports of the India-made model start from about £26,249 ($35,117) in the United Kingdom.

The push into EVs by Maruti Suzuki, which has long dominated India’s mass-market car segment, comes after rivals such as Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles Ltd. and JSW MG Motor India Pvt. have already established themselves in the subcontinent’s fast-evolving EV market, and on the heels of Tesla Inc.’s entry this year. Until now, Maruti Suzuki had been content to rely on cleaner-burning CNG or hybrid electric-gas engines as alternatives to its standard gasoline powertrains.

Charging Infrastructure 

Key to its decision to join the EV party: A roughly 2.5 billion-rupee ($28 million) investment by the carmaker into charging and service infrastructure. That will include installing more than 2,000 charging stations, tying up with 13 third-party charge-point operators that provide access to some 12,000 chargers and building 1,500 EV-enabled workshops across more than 1,000 cities in India.

“There is no point launching a product without the ecosystem; that only leads to negative customer feedback,” Banerjee said.

Range anxiety, patchy public charging and weak after-sales support remain significant hurdles to wider-scale adoption of EVs, he said, adding a real-world range of between 400 to 500 kilometers (248 to 310 miles) at full charge is critical for broader acceptance of the technology. The range of the e VITARA sold in the UK is between 213 and 265 miles, depending on the configuration of the battery pack. 

The automaker plans to introduce three additional electric models by 2030, Banerjee said, while targeting 15% penetration for its EVs in India by the end of the decade.

More than a dozen EVs are being sold in the country, but BNEF Research estimates they account for only 4.2% of India’s total annual passenger-vehicles sales.

Maruti Suzuki’s entry into the battery-powered vehicle market comes even as EV sales momentum has cooled somewhat in India, especially after the government cut consumption taxes in November, stoking demand for small and fossil-fuel-powered vehicles.

Still, EV deliveries in 2026 are expected to grow “with sales in the first three quarters of the year increasing 16% compared to 2025,” Bloomberg NEF said in a Nov. 26 research note.

That growth will be facilitated by the introduction of new EVs, including the e VITARA. “While the automaker has yet to disclose the model’s price, a lower sticker price compared to current best-selling vehicles in the segment could drive up sales,” BNEF said.