[Kamleshgk]

Visiting Mahindra Reva's green factory

We at PlugInIndia got an opportunity to visit the platinum rated green factory of Mahindra Reva.
This manufacturing facility will make every one proud - for the outstanding contribution to preserving the environment, for making India's most innovative car and to show our country that vehicles powered by clean energy are the future.

http://www.pluginindia.com/blogs/visiting-mahindra-revas-green-factory

 

[Kamleshgk]

Its a cool factory that i visited. Its more of an assembly plant, they follow a design philosophy where lot of the components are manufactured by suppliers and the plant itself is a just in time assembly process.

This reduces the amount of land space. Given that land space, it is capable of producing 30,000 electric vehicles per year. Which is very effective use of space. This brings down the cost of investment, the processes are very simple, you are eliminating two or three very high capital intensive costs.

For example - you don't have a sheet metal construction, so u dont need sheet metal stamping. They have pre-impregnated panels for color so they don't need a paint shop. They don't do much welding process, which is done at the supplier’s end. This brings down the net investment.

To give you a sense, following standard manufacturing process of a regular car, would be 10 to 20x capital intensive than what they have spent here.
This is important as EV volumes are going to be relatively lower so you need a low cost manufacturing approach to become profitable.

 

[kennybobby]

That looks like it was an interesting tour and lots of great photos--thanks for sharing.

Have you found that you have sufficient range for your commute?

 

[Kamleshgk]

That looks like it was an interesting tour and lots of great photos--thanks for sharing.

Have you found that you have sufficient range for your commute?

Glad u liked it

Yes i travel 35 kms a day so the 100km range provided is more than enuf for me.
The range estimation of the Mahindra e2o has been spot on.
In fact the efficiency of the drive train is so awesome that, If i travel say 40 kms in 'Eco' mode without using the Air Conditioner, sometimes it just consumes 35 km. Lots of energy is got back in Regen.
We dont any sort of 'BARS' issues noticed by the Nissan Leaf customers.

If interested can check out my blog on the car
www.pluginindia.com/1/post/2013/09/why-i-got-the-mahindra-e2o.html