Homegrown automaker Mahindra has said that from July 1, 2019, prices for passenger vehicles will be hiked by up to Rs 36,000. Why? The company wants to offset the costs incurred by adding mandate safety features across some models. For the uninitiated, a range of safety features including rear parking sensors, seatbelt reminder for front seats, ABS with EBD and speed-alert warning system have to be part of every new vehicle sold in India from the first of next month.

Models like the Bolero, TUV300, Scorpio and KUV100 NXT will receive the biggest bump in their price list. On the other hand, UVs such as the XUV500 and the Marazzo will only see a marginal hike in prices. Here’s what Rajan Wadhera, who is the president of the automotive sector at Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd., said in an official statement:

At Mahindra safety has been at the core of our product development process and we welcome the regulatory requirements relating to safety upgrades. We value every road user’s life and have been effectively contributing to the evolving safety ecosystem. However, the safety regulatory requirement has led to some cost increases. Consequently, we are taking a price hike across some of our passenger vehicles, effective July 1, 2019.

Earlier this month, Mahindra partnered with Blu Smart to introduce electric mobility across India. The duo will kickstart their partnership by introducing EVs (electric vehicles) in New Delhi and slowly spread their wings in other cities such as Pune and Mumbai. Like all other players in the country, Mahindra is hard at work to make models with internal combustion engines compliant with Bharat Stage VI (BSVI) levels of emission norms before April 1, 2020.

Mahindra also introduced a limited-run Thar 700 model earlier this week. Priced at Rs 9.99 lakh (ex-showroom Delhi), it has been conceived to pay homage to the company’s 70 years of existence in the automotive sector. As the name suggests, only 700 of these will ever exist.