Luxury car-maker Porsche is planning to launch its first electric vehicle in the country by the first half of 2020. Price points are yet to be decided.

Porsche, which began operations here in 2012, has been fully importing its cars from Germany.

"The electric vehicle will be launched either in the first or second quarter of the year (within June)," Pravin Shetty, Director, Porsche India, told BusinessLine. Porsche follows a calendar year for accounting purposes.

Larger players

According to him, the vehicle will be launched globally in 2019 and introduced in India within the next year. The prototype of the electric vehicle had already been showcased in Frankfurt in 2015.

For creation of other necessary infrastructure like charging stations, Porsche will wait and see what larger manufacturers and the government are doing.

"We are a smaller player in the market. We will look at what larger players and the government are doing. Moreover, with the government pushing for electric vehicles, we expect the infrastructure to be in place soon," he said.

In 2017, the German car-maker had sold 434 units in the country, an eight per cent growth over the previous year. Globally, the company had seen a 4 per cent year-on-year growth.

Without mentioning any target sales numbers, Shetty said the company was expecting "business to remain in the same range".

GST impact

According to him, implementation of GST has seen the roll-out of a uniform price structure across States. It has also made operations easier from the dealer side.

"However, in terms of sales or demand side, we have seen no impact of GST. There has been neither a negative nor a positive impact," Shetty said.

Post GST roll-out, Porsche cars fall under the 28 per cent tax bracket and an additional 22 per cent cess.

Shetty also denied reports that Porsche had stopped making cars with diesel engines. According to him, the company was launching a diesel variant of its SUV Cayenne.

While its sports car variant 911 remains its flagship model, the automaker also has a compact SUV model Macan.

Other models sold in India include Panamera - a four-door Sedan and two variants of 718 - Cayman (a hard top coupe) and Boxstar (a convertible).