On Friday, the American-based automobile manufacturer, Ford announced that they are considering the plan to blast off the production of electric vehicles to export and probably for sale in the Indian market.
The company Ford India halted its production and sale in India almost for six months and now comes up with the strength of getting approval of the government PLI scheme. This tragic decision of termination happened in the background that the company had to suffer a great loss of US $2 billion that showed the sign that they couldn’t foresee a profitable future hence giving up the venture in the major auto market. In addition, Ford only had less than 2% of the share in the Indian market of passenger vehicles, despite their struggle to get a decent turnover and significant space in the industry that began two decades back.
Ford India Plans With Productions of EVs
Now, this shifting strategy is based on various notions, majorly the subvention promised by the Indian government. Ford now desires to mold India as an EV hub to flourish as they got approval for the proposal submitted for incentives from the government’s investment scheme of $3.5 billion for clean fuel wagons. This forward step done by the Modi government has a cornerstone of reducing the pollution and annihilating oil exports by offering benefits of 18% of the new investments formulated by the automakers to produce electric vehicles and hydrogen – fuel-powered wagons, that couldn’t create any futility and negative impact to the society. Fortunately, Ford is one of the 20 automakers to get perks under this PIL scheme.
This endorsement was done on Friday and hearing the news, Gaurav Vangaal, the Associate Director of Light Production Forecasting at HIS Markit responded, “The move allows Ford to keep a door open to re-enter India if it so decides at a later stage There is a cost-benefit to manufacturing in India, and the company has historically exported vehicles to North America and Europe – both of which are now large and growing EV markets”. He also added that, “Ford will have to prove India can also be cost-competitive for making EVs, for which it will need big investments to localize the supply chain,”.
Now, Ford is hopefully targeting the inflow of customers in order to happen a “global electric vehicle evolution” as the company said, “exploring the possibility of using a Ford plant in India as an export base for EV manufacturing.”
The company has two plants in India and both were completely devoted to internal combustion vehicles. Now, they decided not to keep both functional and looking for one to sell-off. In that event, the other one needs renovation and significant changes to initiate this planned venture, hence the selection will be based on the better suitability to the required revamping.
The response to the question on the first product that the company plans to launch was given by Kapil Sharma, the Ford India head of communications, “There have been no specific discussions on this right now as Ford also plans to serve customers in India with must-have, iconic vehicles, including the Mustang coupe”. Ford has recently announced the huge investment of US $30 billion to supply fully electric vehicles and hybrid vehicles. Utilizing this money, Ford India will be manufacturing low-cost electric vehicles. They really don’t want to restart the production process of manufacturing ones that are on the established line.
