Bajaj: EV startups are upstarts, with no R&D, no engineering

Bajaj said there are at the most 10 large ICE (internal combustion engine) manufacturers in India, but in electric vehicles (EVs), there is one new company every day.

Rajiv Bajaj, Electric two wheelers, electric vehicles, Bajaj Auto Limited, Business news, Indian express business news, Indian express, Indian express news, Current Affairs

Rajiv Bajaj MD, Bajaj Auto File

Calling startups manufacturing electric two-wheelers “upstarts”, Bajaj Auto managing director Rajiv Bajaj blamed them for the recent fire incidents and said they had no business to be in the space.

Speaking at the inauguration of an electric two-wheeler plant of Chetak Technology, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bajaj Auto, at Akurdi in Pune, Bajaj said there are at the most 10 large ICE (internal combustion engine) manufacturers in India, but in electric vehicles (EVs), there is one new company every day.

“You call them startups.

I call them upstarts. I am amazed that people with no R&D, no engineering, no real purchase function in the engineering sense, nothing more than just half an assembly facility, are importing stuff that has not been really validated for the marketplace and are putting it out,” he said on Friday, the birth anniversary of Bajaj Auto’s late chairman Rahul Bajaj, who created the Chetak brand 50 years ago.

He blamed the current environment for promoting the rush of new players, and said there are only two types of EVs in the market — those which have caught fire and those which are going to catch fire. While even ICE engines and brands like Tesla, GM and Hyundai have witnessed such incidents, the issue is not the fire but the underlying process of manufacturing and how problems were resolved, Bajaj pointed out. FE