Mahindra partners Volkswagen for EV-related components. What's significant

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 lifetime. The two companies were evaluating further opportunities for collaboration, the statement added.

Volkswagen has developed a modular, open vehicle platform for EVs, called MEB, which is used to build its cars and those of other group companies including Skoda and Audi. This also allows Volkswagen to be a supplier of electric technology and parts to other automakers.

The supply agreement was the first of its kind for Volkswagen - but the carmaker said last September it was in talks with other players about similar deals, including manufacturers of cars with combustion engines in Asia who were considering producing cars for the European market via a Volkswagen collaboration.