Less than a year after Anand Mahindra took the stage in London to announce Mahindra and Mahindra’s foray into the UK with its electric car e2o, the company is pulling the plug on the British operations after sales failed to pick up.

When contacted by BusinessLine, an M&M spokesperson acknowledged that sales in the UK were far below the company’s expectations and said the company would rather focus on the Indian market.

“The Indian EV market is poised for a take-off and given that scenario, we are primarily focussing on the Indian market. We'll reconsider the UK market at an opportune time,” the spokesperson said.

At the time of the launch in April last year, Mahindra had said that the UK will act as a gateway to Europe for the auto major.

M&M wanted the UK to be used as a base to sell its electric cars to other markets within the EU where the governments are trying to promote the use of electric cars.

However, two months into the launch, the UK announced its exit from the European Union, creating an atmosphere of economic uncertainty.

Industry observers, however, feel these economic uncertainties created by Brexit, which will take away economic incentives from car makers, increasing the costs of selling cars from the UK to other European nations, could be the key reason for M&M’s pull out from the UK.

New Delhi’s increased push towards electric vehicles and plans to bring in incentives to promote the sales of such vehicles also as a factor. This is expected to create a big opportunity for Mahindra Electric — the only all-electric car maker in the country. By 2030, the government even plans to have an all-electric car fleet to reduce fuel imports.

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