The company is leveraging its R&D facilities set up in Jaipur and Stephanskirchen, Germany to develop the new products
A senior company official at HeroMoto Corp has revealed the company’s plans to launch an electric model next year that would mark the two-wheeler maker’s foray into the rapidly growing electric vehicle EV market, much like several other auto industry players who are steadily making their way into the much sought after vertical.
The company is leveraging its R&D facilities set up in Jaipur and Stephanskirchen, Germany to develop the new products. The company had also recently announced its strategic partnership with Taiwanese battery swapping refuelling platform, Gogoro, to introduce its platform in the Indian EV market and jointly develop Hero-branded vehicles into the market, which will be powered by the latter.
A PTI report quoted Niranjan Gupta, CFO at Hero MotoCorp, saying, “We are trying to launch one of the EV products in fiscal year 2022, and you will see multiple actions, whether it is our own product or a swap product or with Gogoro. All of those actions you will see in the next calendar year.”
The company’s R&D in India and Germany will work on developing a fixed charging system, while its collaboration on Gogoro is in terms of battery swapping charging system. On this, Gupta added, “Our view is that probably both will work in parallel to each other. Given the entire appetite and the infrastructure that exists, it is complementary that our own programme works on a fixed charging and then with Gogoro which will work on swapping, that allows us to play in both the spaces,”
Revealing that the timeline for both the projects is next year, he added, “I would not say which part of the next year. Obviously, we are trying to accelerate as much as we can, but right now, I would say that in the next calendar year, you can hope to see a lot of actions on the EV front from our side as far as hitting the market is concerned.”
Notably, Hero MotoCorp has been a key investor in EV startup Ather Energy.
