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-   -   Mahindra Reva sets up 30,000 p.a. capacity plant in Bangalore (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/electric-cars/125467-mahindra-reva-sets-up-30-000-p-capacity-plant-bangalore.html)

Mahindra Reva Electric Vehicles has opened its new manufacturing facility in Bangalore. The Mahindra Group, who acquired Reva in May 2010, has invested Rs 100 crore in this plant. It will have an initial capacity of 6,000 Reva electric cars per year and is expected to reach its maximum production capacity of 30,000 units per year by 2015.

Like the car itself, the plant is also eco-friendly with solar energy providing 35% of its energy needs.

The plant is expected to produce the next generation Reva NXR electric car. This model will be priced at about Rs 4 lakhs and will run on lithium-ion batteries producing 39.4 BHP of power. It will take 8 hours to fully charge the NXR and a single charge will last 160 kms.

New phase

In the 12 years of its existence, the Reva has seen very poor sales, selling only 4,000 units in total. Of these, merely a thousand have been sold in India, while the rest have been exported. The high cost for what is effectively a two-seater car, lack of infrastructure (charging stations), visual appeal and quality have been marked as factors for its failure. The range of the original Reva was extremely limited too.

Group CEO Anand Mahindra revealed that he would aggressively lobby for subsidies and benefits for electric vehicles in India. The first step will be to force the government to bring back the subsidy scheme for electric vehicles that lapsed on March 31 this year. Since April, there has been a 75% drop in electric vehicle sales.

Going forward, the company will also introduce new technologies that allow quick recharging, solar-powered personal charging units and even using the car to power domestic (house) electricity needs.

Mahindra will look to capitalise on the rising fuel prices as a factor to push the Reva into the market. Other car manufacturers like Chevrolet and Tata Motors are also rumoured to be developing their own electric vehicles for India.

Looking forward to see them on roads soon. Car surely looks promising. What we need now is infrastructure and govt to acknowledge the fact that alternate energy should be rewarded and give more benefits to both manufacturer as well as the end customer

Solar energy panels makes more sense because state like karnataka burns coal for energy and by driving such cars we are not really benefiting the environment !!

Sure we will reduce the air pollution in the city limits though.

Another good point i see is the compact size of this car. I drive mostly 1-2 people daily to office. so cars like these would eat very less space on road.

A step in the right direction. With some subsidies and lower road tax, this could be a perfect city car.

Priced rightly it would make inroads into Nano & Alto sales.

Does Mahindra have plans to 'stick' solar panels to the roof of the Reva? This would surely reduce the (day-time) load on the battery. Cost of solar panels may be a limiting factor, though.

Hey DukeNukem,

What is the source of the above information (i.e. pricing)? The Reva-i (current or previous generation) sells for this price. So, I doubt if NXR can be priced so low. To add to it, we are talking about Lithium-Ion battries here. The Reva-i had lead-acid batteries.

The information that I got from a Reva employee last year in an informal chat was that there would be two vairants.
1. Lead Acid battery powered model with a range of 80Kms (Similar to Reva-i in terms of battery technology) and
2. A Li-ion battery powered model with a range of 160 Kms.

The former could be priced around 4-5 lacs (closer to 5 lacs) and the latter much higher than that. I have no idea about premium for the Li-ion variant.

I hope that the info posted by you is true :), for I have been waiting for a well priced electric car for a long time now. Keeping fingers crossed.

I hope Mahindra - Reva have some plans for a Lithium alternative. The metal is a Chinese monopoly and we are fast running out of it.