Saar: The option to choose the all-electric sedan is now available through Meru’s various touchpoints, including Meru Zone at Hyderabad airport.

Homegrown automaker Mahindra has tied-up with cab aggregator Meru to deploy a fleet of e-Verito sedans on the roads of Hyderabad from April 22, 2018. The capital of Telangana state becomes the testing ground for this pilot project before both the companies take a call on expanding their partnership to other cities in the country. Currently, the e-Verito is the only all-electric sedan available in the country. It will soon be joined by the Tata Tigor Electric.

Customers can opt for the Mahindra e-Verito through Meru’s various touchpoints. That includes the mobile app, website and the call center. The sedan with zero emissions is also available at the Meru Zone at Hyderabad airport.

Upon announcing this partnership, Mahesh Babu, CEO, Mahindra Electric, said:

“As pioneers of electric mobility, we at Mahindra Electric are happy to lead electric fleet adoption in India and are glad to partner with Meru for pilot deployment of eVeritos in Hyderabad.  This is definitely going to make it easier for the city to adopt EV technology and will also be in line with our constant endeavor to make EVs more accessible to a larger urban population. We believe that innovative and unique partnership models like this pilot, will lead the way towards sustainable transportation in urban cities. We are now looking forward to working with Meru to have this project rolled out to more cities.”

This isn’t the first time Mahindra has tied up with a cab service provider in the country. In May last year, Mahindra announced a similar partnership with Ola cabs to deploy a fleet of e2o Plus hatchbacks in Nagpur, Maharashtra. Although the intent was ‘green’ but because of the lack of a robust infrastructure for the all-electric car, the results weren’t as promising as the companies had hoped.

Speaking on this new partnership with Mahindra, Nilesh Sangoi, CEO, Meru, said:

“Electric Vehicle ecosystem is growing at a rapid pace towards the inflection point where it would soon bridge the viability gap. EVs’ potential to bring down the air pollution levels and savings in country’s energy bills is unparalleled. Government is actively promoting adoption of EVs through National Electric Mobility Mission and other initiatives through various ministries. We are launching a pilot in Hyderabad with Mahindra eVerito sedan cars in association with AimGreen. Based on the learnings of this pilot, we will expand this initiative to induct more EVs in our network in other cities that we operate in. Over next 4 years, we intend to move major part of our fleet to EVs. We believe that this initiative will greatly benefit the society, consumers and also enhance the earnings of our driver partners.”

This partnership between the two companies was announced on this year’s Earth Day. It remains to be seen how Mahindra and the Telangana state will ensure that the all-electric mobility on Meru’s platform doesn’t meet a similar fate as the one in Nagpur. Earlier this month, Mahindra also joined hands with Zoomer in the national capital. The duo shook on deploying 100 e2o Plus hatchbacks on the streets of the highly polluted Delhi.

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