Bajaj aims to grab EV three wheeler leadership from M&M, plans to sell across 250 cities by FY25

Bajaj Auto, the country’s largest three-wheeler maker, which has entered the electric three-wheeler market with a measured approach, is planning to aggressively expand and grab the leadership from Mahindra & Mahindra in the zero-emission three-wheeler space.

Speaking post the Q2 FY24 earnings call, Rakesh Sharma, ED of Bajaj Auto told Autocar Professional, that the entry into the EV three-wheeler space has been very good. In a short span of a year, two markets of Agra and Pune that the brand entered – it has already acquired a leadership position. 

“Our approach in the three-wheeler EV side is to get to market share which we are used to in ICE space, which is upwards of 50 percent and closer to 70 percent. We are certainly looking for a leadership position. We will be going for a very high market share - which is where we enter.”

From two markets, Bajaj Auto has recently expanded into 10 cities in North India. By March of 2024, the plan is to expand to 40 cities, before reaching out to 250 cities in FY-25.

“There was a temptation to go all over the country, but we have stayed focused on a couple of markets, Agra and Pune. We have studied all the use cases, studied whether we are meeting the customer expectation, which we are and hence we are now the market leaders, even though the others have been more than one year before us,” asserted Sharma.

In the conventional ICE three-wheeler space, Bajaj Auto is by far the leader, especially on the passenger side, however, it has been slow off the mark in the EV three-wheeler space, which has been very well captured by Mahindra & Mahindra, the second largest commercial vehicle maker in India.

M&M’s Last Mile Mobility Division has already sold over 1 lakh electric three wheelers.

In the last financial year, the division sold over 36,000 vehicles, with a market share of 14 percent. At the end of June 2023, M&M was sitting on an orderbook of over 20,000 units.

Unlike Bajaj, M&M sells its EV three-wheeler across 1150 touch points across the country and it has worked on creating a network of over 10,000 charging stations. 

In the conventional ICE - i.e. petrol and CNG space, Bajaj Auto sold over 3 lakh three-wheelers with a market share of over 60 percent. Mahindra & Mahindra was the third largest player with a market share of 15 percent in FY23. 

But in the EV three-wheeler space, M&M has a market share of over 60-70 percent.