Mumbai, Jan. 21 -- Toyota Kirloskar Motor Pvt. Ltd, the Indian arm of Japan's Toyota Motor Corp., will leverage its model-sharing partnership with Maruti Suzuki India Ltd to bring its first electric car to the country, becoming the last major automaker to enter the battery-powered mobility in the world's third-largest car market. Bookings for the Urban Cruiser Ebella, a cross-badged version of Maruti's eVitara, started on Tuesday, the company said. However, it didn't disclose the prices or when the company will actually start delivering the car to buyers. Even Maruti Suzuki, the Indian unit of Japan's Suzuki Corp., has yet to deliver a single eVitara in India or disclose its prices, a year after it unveiled the car at the Bharat Mobility Global Expo in New Delhi last January. eVitara deliveries to the more lucrative European market, where it starts at about €35,000 (over Rs.37 lakh), have taken precedence. Since starting exports of eVitara from Maruti's Hansalpur plant in Gujarat, the company has shipped more than 13,000 units. While the 2019 partnership allows Toyota to rebadge Suzuki's cars as its own, Maruti gets access to its export network. In the ongoing financial year, Maruti had guided to produce 70,000 electric cars, part of which will be supplied to Toyota. The exact number of rebadged units remains unclear. Toyota is among the last major automakers to launch an EV in India. Between April and December 2025, Toyota was the fifth-largest car seller in India with sales of just over 2,70,000 vehicles, accounting for a market share of 8.1%, according to data from the industry body Society of Indian Automotive Manufacturers. It was outsold by its product-sharing partner and market leader Maruti Suzuki, as well as Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd, Tata Motors Ltd and Hyundai Motor India Ltd. While Renault-Nissan alliance and German brands Skoda and Volkswagen also do not sell EVs in India yet, they command much smaller shares of the passenger vehicle market at less than 2% for Skoda and sub-1% for the others. To be sure, the Volkswagen Group-owned luxury brand Audi has been selling electric cars in India for some time. Toyota has plunged into India's EV market even as the company has been one of the vocal critics of limiting government subsidies to only electric vehicles. Toyota, a global leader in hybrid vehicle technology, has argued that policy support should be extended to hybrids as they offer a more practical alternative to conventional internal combustion engine (ICE) cars. "In India, it's been 10-12 years since we have been selling strong hybrid vehicles. It enabled the ecosystem for electric vehicle parts to come up because when you are selling a hybrid vehicle, you are also selling an electric powertrain," said Vikram Gulati, country head & executive vice president (corporate affairs and governance) at Toyota Kirloskar Motor, on the sidelines of the launch. The sales of hybrid vehicles in India allowed the EV parts ecosystem to develop and bring down the cost, he said. "Otherwise, we would have still been struggling with a chicken and egg situation."...