Chennai, Sep 7 (IANS): Commercial vehicles major Ashok Leyland Ltd on Friday said it has inaugurated its electric vehicle (EV) facility in its plant at Ennore here.

In a statement issued here the company said it is India's first integrated facility for design, prototyping, testing, process prototyping and solutions design.

"The in-house facilities include engineering, prototyping and testing for motors, battery modules and packs and a power electronics lab. Keeping in mind the rapidly evolving and changing market and technology, it has been conceived as an in-house start-up facility in order to stay flexible and fast," the statement said.

"In our 70th year, we are laying the foundation for our future. The EV Centre in Ennore will give us the edge throughout the evolution of eMobility," Vinod K Dasari, Managing Director was quoted as saying in the statement.

Commenting on this milestone, Ashok Leyland, said, "Besides working on multiple technologies and platforms for our products, we are creating new disruptive products and services that will change the very paradigm of Commercial Vehicle mobility. The focus is on a massive number of internal initiatives for safety, reliability and optimizing total cost of ownership. We are committed to exploit new opportunities in terms of efficiency, energy, geometry and business models which Electric Drive Trains offers."

"At present, we have a capacity to take care of about 5,000-10,000 vehicles per annum, with different battery and charging options. We have leveraged start-ups in India as well as from abroad, to bring in innovative yet cost-effective solutions that are offered by us on a turnkey basis. The idea is to have a mature and dynamic portfolio of products, services and solutions when the volume market takes off in a few years," said Karthick Athmanathan, Business Unit Head, EV's & eMobility.