The wraps are off. What began life as the eVX concept has transformed into the eVitara electric SUV. It was unveiled a couple of days ago at Milan, Italy. And it’s coming to India in January 2025, where it’ll be showcased at the Bharat Mobility Expo in Delhi. Market launch with price announcement is slated for March/April 2025. The eVitara is Maruti Suzuki’s first stab at electric cars, and there’s a lot riding on this EV. So, let’s launch straight into 5 solid reasons why you must be really excited about Maruti’s first electric car.
The BYD Connection
What’s an electric car without the all-important battery pack, and who better than Chinese EV giant BYD to literally ‘nail’ this area. Well, the Maruti eVitara will use the globally renowned ‘Blade’ battery cells from BYD – a world leader in electric car battery technology. Some trivia: Did you know that BYD began life as a mobile phone battery maker?
And it’s just not the battery cells that the eVitara will use but the entire battery pack will be a straight import from BYD China. This is the single most important thing – game changing if you will – about the eVitara. Why? Because the Blade battery pack is one of the best (if not the very best) in the business, and that’s tested for thermal runaway using the extremely brutal ‘nail test’.
The Blade battery will sit in the floor of the eVitara, a born-electric car, allowing designers to maximize interior volume while engineers work on keeping the center of gravity as low as possible for sharp handling and road holding.
While the eVitara is just the stepping stone for Maruti Suzuki and Toyota in the EV space, the usage of BYD Blade batteries is expected to gather steam in the next couple of years. The eVitara is based on the 40PL platform – a flexible architecture that will spawn a slew of electric cars, including 7 seat MPVs. When that happens, expect nearly all these EVs to use BYD Blade batteries – offering class leading performance, range and reliability.
And if BYD, Toyota and Maruti come together to localize Blade battery technology in India – the place where the global Suzuki and Toyota alliance will build low cost EVs for the world, the entire electric car ecosystem in India will get a huge fillip. Why, this could even be India’s ‘Tesla’ moment without Tesla actually getting involved. BYD could play the role that the Indian government hoped Tesla would – to help create an ecosystem for high performance electric vehicle technology.
This is how important the coming together of BYD, Suzuki (with Maruti of course) and Toyota could be for the electric vehicle ecosystem in India. But only if the Communist Chinese government doesn’t have its way. Enough digressing, let’s move on.
There’s Something For Everyone
Maruti builds for the masses. It always has. And the eVitara is no different. The electric SUV gets not one but two battery packs – a 49 kWH battery to keep costs palatable for those looking at this electric SUV for city transport. Then there’s the mammoth 61 kWh (for its class) for those want a highway-worthy EV. A real world range of 400 Kms should be easy with the bigger battery given the fact that the Tata Curvv.EV (with a 55 kWH battery) manages a similar distance.
Powertrains? Not one, not two but three! At the bottom, there is a single axle motor that makes 144 Bhp-189 Nm. In the middle, the same motor gets an uprated 174 Bhp-189 Nm output, and at the top, there are no compromises. Top-end trims will get an extra motor on the rear axle, for a considerable 184 Bhp-300 Nm output. The additional motor at the rear axle adds 65 Bhp, and more importantly all-wheel drive functionality.
If – and we really hope they do – Maruti brings in the top-of-the-line trim to India, in the first time in its 4 decade history, the brand would have 3 all wheel drive vehicles on sale – the Jimny 4X4, the Grand Vitara AWD and the eVitara AWD. Has never happened before. Meanwhile, this is a trend that will solidify for electrics make building 4X4s relatively easy. Going forward, expect to see a slew of all-wheel drive offerings in the EV space – even in affordable segments.
Network Effect!
Maruti Suzuki is the only car brand on planet Earth to have a service center at Kaza, Spiti, at a whopping 3,740 meters above mean sea level. Get the drift? Well, lakhs of Indians buy Maruti Suzuki cars because it’s the only brand selling (and more importantly offering after sales service) in their part of the country. A great network is everything, and Maruti Suzuki has just set out to build India’s most comprehensive charging network that an automaker has ever managed.
Before the official Indian launch of the eVitara (which is slated to happen in March or April 2025), Maruti Suzuki has promised to put up 25,000 electric charging stations. What this means is, lamenting about poor charging infrastructure can no longer be a reason stopping widespread electric car adoption. Maruti Suzuki plans to leverage its 5,100 service centers across 2,300 cities for charging points.
Every Maruti Suzuki service center will have at least two charging points and a dedicated bay for EV charging, reads the plan. The country’s largest automaker is even talking to oil marketing companies to put up charging points. The plan seems very solid, and if anyone can pull it off, it’s Maruti.
Kitna Deti Hai
Great fuel efficiency is synonymous with cars wearing the Maruti Suzuki badge on the bonnet. In the EV space, fuel efficiency more or less means range – the ability to go further on a single charge. This is one big reason why Maruti Suzuki has decided to opt for a segment leading 61 kWh battery pack on the top-end eVitara. A healthy 400 Kms real world range per charge for the eVitara would mean that another big bottleneck for EV adoption – range anxiety – will be cleared.
The large battery capacity, high performance Blade battery from BYD, and finally the 25,000 strong charging point network across the length and breadth of the country, should help Maruti Suzuki crack the ‘Kitna Deti Hai’ code in the electric vehicle space as well. And just think of the multiplier effects when Toyota joins the party sometime late next year with its own iteration (badge engineered) of the eVitara?
Nearly As Sharp As The Concept
Sexy on the show floor, boring in real life. This is a pattern we’ve seen oft repeated as production constraints dull down concepts when they make the cut from imagination to reality. We saw this famously happen with the sexy Maruti XA Alpha Concept, which eventually became the boring Brezza. But in case of the eVitara, which began life as the eVX, the production version seems quite similar to the concept. A big win? You bet!
In the eVitara, you have an electric SUV that looks quite sharp yet muscular, bold yet acceptable. Maruti Suzuki designers have managed to walk the tightrope of building a SUV that is in-your-face yet pleasing enough for the masses to accept. In fact, the eVitara doesn’t look outlandish like many other EVs, and this seems intentional, for the electric SUV will have to bring in volumes, both in India and internationally. Wide appeal, please-all-offend-none that’s what the eVitara seems to be built for despite retaining the design flourishes seen in the concept. Over to the launch now.
