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).