India, Feb. 16 -- Volkswagen and Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd have signed a supply agreement on the use of key electric components of the German carmaker's open platform for electric vehicles (EVs), Volkswagen said on Friday.

Mahindra plans to use certain platform components, as well as Volkswagen's unified battery cell, for its own electric platform, called INGLO, Volkswagen said in a statement. The Indian company will be the first external partner to use the unified cell, a new cell technology that Volkswagen plans to use for 80% of its battery cells and promises will reduce costs by half.

Volkswagen said the agreement would run "over several years" and have a total volume of about 50 gigawatt hours of energy storage capacity over its life...