Hyundai motor india isn’t planning to hike prices of electrical version Kona, regardless of expectancies of a upward push inside the price of the vehicle with the government proposing to increase customs duty on imported EVs, a company official said.
The automaker, that is trying to force in a mass marketplace electric vehicle (EV) over the subsequent two-three years, said it’s going to appearance to boom localisation to keep the price of the model under check to offset impact of increased customs duty.
“Currently we are are importing some parts of the Kona Electric from South Korea. As per the new Budget announcement, the import duty will go up by 5 per cent… We understand the government’s push is towards Make in India so we will do more towards localisation of the product here,” Hyundai Motor India (HMIL) Managing Director and CEO SS Kim told PTI.
He admitted that the import duty increase will lead to rise in cost of the vehicle but “we will not pass it over to the customer and try to mitigate the impact by localising more and optimising our processes”.
As announced in Budget 2020-21, import duties on fully imported commercial EVs will go up to 40 per cent from 25 per cent, while the same on semi knocked-down electric passenger vehicles will go up to 30 per cent from 15 per cent.
Import of completely knocked-down units of electric vehicles will attract import duty of 15 per cent, up from 10 per cent earlier. These changes come into effect from April 1.
