Carmaker Volkswagen has said it has no plans to launch any electric vehicle production in India anytime soon, as it would be pointless to participate in the Indian electrification plan in the absence of service infrastructure.
“Electric mobility in India is still a purely political project. There are not enough charging stations across the country, which makes this plan unviable, ”said Steffen Knapp, Director of Volkswagen Passenger Cars.
“In Germany, we had over 65,000 charging stations for electric vehicles, and we said that Germany was not yet ready to electrify vehicles, while in India there are only 4,000,” he added.
At present, electric vehicles in India are provided with charging on average for 70-80 kilometers. Therefore, automakers believe that so far electric vehicles cannot replace vehicles with a gasoline engine either in terms of ride quality or comfort.
In addition, according to Knapp, there are problems with purchasing auto parts in India. Higher import duties on auto parts in India led to an increase in the total cost of servicing Volkswagen vehicles, which negatively impacted sales last year.
To combat high total manufacturing costs, Volkswagen cut auto parts prices by 15 percent last year, which also reduced sales.
Volkswagen produces about 82 percent of all its automotive components in India.
In 2018, the German automaker sold an average of 3,000 vehicles a month and plans to sell 1,200 vehicles in the next four years.
