The Murugappa Group has reentered the electric vehicle EV business Fourteen years after the Chennai conglomerate first manufactured and sold electric scooters in 2008 its group company The Tube Investments of India TII launched an electric 3wheeler under an allnew brand Montra Electric TIIs EV business will be overseen by its subsidiary TI Clean Mobility TICMPL
The newly launched Montra Electric 3wheeler called Super Auto comes in solid white and is priced starting at Rs 306 lakh after subsidies It comes with two battery variants 10 kWh and 766 kWh with the higher variant having an ARAIcertified range of 197 kilometers top speed of 55 kmhr and torque of 60 nm
TII now says it intends to launch an electric tractor and an etruck too When we first forayed into making escooters in 2008 we realised that we were a little too early for the market said Arun Murugappan executive chairman of TII in a rare exclusive with CNBCTV18 We realise now that electric mobility is the way forward and want to reform TIIs EV platform he added We are not going to foray into electric 2wheelers since the market is too crowded

This firstmover advantage of staying away from the crowd and building commercial EV products in the 3wheeler and tractor space could well be TIIs big differentiator However the company believes theres more that it ought to do in order to hit the jackpot We need to be fast to adopt technology and provide customers with cost benefits through our products said KK Paul managing director at TICMPL
To ensure that it hits the ground running TII has invested Rs 200 crore in setting up an EV manufacturing unit at Ambattur Chennai that can churn out 75000 units annually Capacity expansion the company said will occur only when the time is ripe It wont be difficult to expand since the Murugappa Group has strong backend systems and investment avenues Paul added
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