Honda forays into EV scooter business in India

Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India introduces ACTIVA e: and QC1 electric scooters, focusing on sustainable mobility and market expansion.

Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India (HMSI) has on Thursday made its maiden foray into the electric scooter segment by announcing two new EV scooters: Honda ACTIVA e: and Honda QCI, both available in five shades each.

These new EV scooters would be manufactured at Honda’s Narsapura plant situated in the outskirts of Bengaluru. ‘‘We will manufacture 100,000 units of these new scooters while the plant has an installed capacity for 2.6 million units,’‘ said Tsutsumu Otani, Managing Director, President & CEO, Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India.

The company said bookings would start from January 1, 2025, and deliveries would commence from February in Bengaluru, Delhi and Mumbai, to start with. The Japanese company, however, didn’t disclose the price of scooters. ‘‘We will gauge the market responses for now and decide,’‘ he said.

Mr. Otani further said, ‘‘The introduction of ACTIVA e: and QC1 marks a defining step in our commitment to sustainable mobility in India. It is in line with Honda’s global ‘Triple Action to ZERO’ concept to realise carbon neutrality by 2050, which focuses on three areas: carbon neutrality, clean energy, and resource circulation.’‘

Responding to a media query on Honda’s market expectation for EV sales, Yogesh Mathur, Director, Sales and Marketing, Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India, said, ‘`We will cover 50% of the India’s EV market in the first year itself. We want to be in the entire EV ecosystem, swappable and fixed battery segments.’‘

In preparation of its EV play in scooters, HMSI is currently in the process of setting up swapping infrastructure across Bengaluru, Delhi and Mumbai. ‘‘We will have 500 swapping stations in these cities soon, so that a customer will have a station within 5 km radius,’‘ Mr. Mathur said.

According to him, the company is also training its dealers and upgrading the dealer networks to equip them for EV scooter business.