Bajaj Auto sets up Rs 300 crore EV manufacturing facility in Pune

Bajaj Auto on Wednesday announced an investment of Rs 300 crore as it commenced work at its brand-new unit at Akurdi, Pune, for manufacturing electric vehicles (EVs). The unit, which is spread over an area of half a million square feet, will employ nearly 800 people and have a production capacity of 500,000 EVs a year.

“In 2001, Bajaj 2.0 took off on the roaring Pulsar. In 2021, Bajaj 3.0 has arrived on the charming Chetak. Going forward, for the Bajaj portfolio, except for implementing one state-of-the-art ICE platform that is currently under development, all our R&D resources are now laser focused on creating EV solutions for the future. This alignment reflects our belief that light EVs for sustainable urban mobility is an idea whose time may finally have come,” Rajiv Bajaj, managing director, Bajaj Auto, said.

Akurdi is the site of the original Chetak scooter factory that made Bajaj Auto a household name in India. The first vehicle from the unit is expected to roll out by June 2022.

The investments made by Bajaj will be supplemented by a number of vendors, who will invest a further Rs 250 crore, the company said.

Of late, several automakers in India, including Bajaj, have approved incorporation of wholly owned subsidiaries to venture into manufacturing of electric and hybrid vehicles. Bajaj’s rivals Hero MotoCorp and TVS Motors, though slowly, are making steady progress to have a stable EV business alongside their traditional IC engine products.

Hero said its EV project is going on as per plans, and the Chittoor manufacturing facility in Andhra Pradesh is gearing up to produce the EVs. The teams at Hero are focused on working across the entire EV eco-system, such as battery technology and battery management systems, powertrain, telematics, analytics & diagnostics and charging infrastructure, according to a statement by the company. The development of EV is happening under Hero’s emerging mobility business unit (EMBU), which is set for the launch of the first EV product by March 2022.

On the other hand, TVS, in September, bought 80 per cent in EGO Movement, a Swiss e-bike company, for $17.9 million to ex­pand its presence in developed markets, including Europe. The group has tied up with BMW Motorrad to co-develop new platforms and future technologies.

Bajaj currently produces around 1,000 units of the Chetak EV scooter a month.