Toyota launched its first fully electric vehicle in India on Tuesday, entering the country’s nascent EV market with an SUV offering two battery sizes and a subscription service for the pack.
The Urban Cruiser Ebella is priced between ₹1,906,000 and ₹2,442,000 ($20,780–$26,630), with orders opening Tuesday, local outlet CARHP India reported.
The SUV comes with either a 49 kWh or 61 kWh battery, with the larger pack offering range of up to 543 kilometers (337 miles) on a single charge.
Toyota is offering an eight-year battery warranty with 60% assured buyback.
The Japanese automaker is also introducing a Battery-as-a-Service option, allowing customers to subscribe to the battery rather than purchase it outright.
The program was debuted by Chinese EV maker Nio, which has operates the world’s largest battery-swapping network in China since 2018.
Battery Rental Service
Toyota is not the first automaker to offer a battery rental program in India — MG Motor and, more recently, Suzuki (with the e-Vitara SUV) already provide similar options.
The program lets customers buy the Urban Cruiser Ebella with a significantly lower upfront cost by excluding the battery from the vehicle price.
According to Auto Car Professional, MG Motor offers a battery subscription model where customers pay per use, starting at around ₹3.5 ($0.04) per km, not including charging costs.
This approach reduces the vehicle’s initial purchase price by roughly 40% compared to compact internal combustion engine (ICE) SUVs.
Toyota has not yet unveiled further details on its BaaS scheme, as the company’s Indian website directs customers to dealerships for more information.
“For detailed information on the Assured Buyback and Battery as a Service schemes, we recommend visiting your nearest Toyota dealership,” it read.
Toyota’s Approach
For charging, Toyota has partnered with ChargeZone and Jio-bp.
The company is also equipping dealerships with charging infrastructure and providing complete home charging solutions.
Sabari Manohar, from Toyota Kirloskar Motor, said at the launch event that “for EVs to scale in India, customers must first feel confident about ownership, not just excited by technology.”
“Our focus has been to reduce anxiety around service, charging, and resale by building a complete ownership ecosystem,” Manohar added, reiterating that the strategy is to remove uncertainty first, allowing EV adoption to follow naturally.
Toyota says customers will also gain access to over 500 EV-enabled service touchpoints, with the company having trained 2,500 EV mechanics for a 45-minute scheduled maintenance proccess.
Toyota’s Hybrids
The Japanese automaker is widely recognized for its strong commitment to hybrid technology, even as other automakers move towards fully electric models.
Toyota’s President and Chairman Akio Toyoda has repeatedly highlighted the importance of hybrids, saying in interviews that “hybrid technology is key to reducing emissions globally” and that focusing solely on BEVs may not be realistic for all regions due to infrastructure challenges.
A few years ago, Toyoda had stressed that “we need a diverse approach, including hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and hydrogen fuel cells, not just pure EVs.”
The company has argued that policy support in India should be extended to hybrids as they offer a more practical alternative to conventional ICE vehicles.
“In India, it’s been 10-12 years since we have been selling strong hybrid vehicles,” country chief Vikram Gulati stated.
“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,” he added.
Battery Swap Systems
Tesla first trialed battery swapping with the Model S in 2013, by opening one battery swap station in California.
The Elon Musk-led company promised customers a 90-second battery swap.
However, two years later, the idea was abandoned, with Tesla claiming that there was low demand for it. The company focused on its Supercharging network instead.
Five years later, Chinese EV maker Nio opened its first battery swap station.
It became the first company to invest heavily in the technology, having added 3,700 stations across China since then.
The EV maker is now nearing the 100 millionth battery swap in its domestic market.
Additionally, China’s battery giant CATL launched its ‘Choco-Swap’ battery swap ecosystem in December 2024.
The battery manufacturer’s stations can automatically replace a depleted battery in 70–80 seconds — about half of Nio‘s time — as shown to EV in September.
CATL revealed late last year that 1,020 stations were deployed in 2025, above its 1,000-unit goal for the year.
