The Wagon R EV is going to be the first fully electric vehicle from Maruti Suzuki to launch in India by 2020. The compact EV is already in its testing phase.
Maruti Suzuki has already announced that it is going to launch its first fully electric car in India by 2020. And we have concrete information regarding which vehicle the homegrown automaker has decided to electrify first.
It is going to be none other than Maruti Suzuki’s one of the largest selling compact hatchback in India, the WagonR.
Yes, you heard it right. The Wagon R is going to be the first all-electric car which the Indo-Japanese automaker is planning to launch in India by the year 2020.
But how come the company reach this decision?
It clearly has other cars that are selling more than the Wagon R. For reference, according to the monthly sales figures for August 2018, the Wagon R ranked on the fifth spot, behind the Baleno, Swift and the Alto.
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Then why pick the WagonR as the desired choice for electrification?
Well, the answer to that question is:
Maruti Suzuki has conducted a survey asking a certain target audience on as to what they were looking for in an electric car. Based on the findings of this survey, the company deduced that the Wagon R fit the bill of what the Indian populations would want to have or need in a budget EV of their choice.
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The question which arises here is that if Maruti Suzuki new what exactly people want from an electric car, then why not build an altogether new one. Why compromise some of the requirements by electrifying a current model rather than meeting them all with a brand new one?
The answer to this is:
Building an altogether new vehicle from scratch will require huge investments. Be in terms of manpower or monetary. Om the other hand, electrifying an existing vehicle will bring down the investment in the developing of the vehicle and hence, resulting in a lower cost for the end product.
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How much does the Maruti Wagon R EV is going to cost anyway?
Well, Maruti hasn’t revealed this as of yet and we are only going to get the exact pricing list once the product launches in India during 2020. However, we can safely speculate that it is likely to fall in-between the price range of INR 6 Lakh to 7 Lakhs.
So then, what is the latest update on the Maruti Wagon R EV?
Well, Maruti Suzuki is believed to have reached the testing phase of this product. The company has already manufactured 50 units of the electric Wagon R which are currently under test. Maruti has also displayed a prototype of this vehicle at its manufacturing facility in Gurugram. Furthermore, there are speculations that the automaker will showcase this vehicle at the 2 day MOVE Sumit, being organised from 7th to 8th September in Delhi.
