Mahindra reveals five new electric SUVs

What you’re looking at... is a drawing, of course. But what it represents is rather larger than that. Five separate electric SUVs – the XUV.e8, XUV.e9, BE.05, BE.07 and BE.09 – all based on a single modular EV platform, with the first on sale in less than 18 months’ time and another two in showrooms a year after that. And we’re tired just writing it all out, let alone doing it.

Underpinning the charge (sorry) is Mahindra’s new ‘Inglo’ EV platform, which offers between 60 and 80kWh of battery capacity, accepts DC supply at up to 175kW and charges to 80 per cent in half an hour. It also offers V2L or ‘vehicle to load’, which is a fairly arcane way of saying you can plug a special dongle into the charging port and run roughly any electrical appliance you choose. In any case, we can already think of about 10 ways we’d use such a feature.

But, as we’ve just realised, listing the battery specs first is akin to talking about a new petrol car and leading with how big its fuel tank is. So we’ll try to avoid such a bizarre double standard in the future and move on the important, Top Gearish bits.

Like the fact that it’s rear-drive by default, with somewhere between 228 and 281bhp on offer, extending to all-wheel drive and 335 to 388bhp should you so choose. Arithmetic then dictates that the front motor is rated to 107bhp... which, if we’ve done our maths even close to accurately, is about a 68:32 rear-biased torque split on the lower-powered AWD model and getting on for a 79:21 ratio for the top-spec cars.

Which feels uncannily spot-on for some heroic powerslides somewhere in the Himalayas. And just in case you wanted to invite anyone to test that theory out, Mahindra, you know where to find us. It’d also likely be a fair test of the Inglo platform’s semi-active suspension and brake by wire tech... but hopefully not the five-star global NCAP rating it’s designed to meet.

But, Mahindra, in case you were wondering which car is best for such a Top Gear test, we’d immediately suggest the BE.05, given its ‘Angry Polestar meets Extreme E’ vibe, and the fact you’ve called it a Sports Electric Vehicle.

And yes, self-applied appellations mean about as much as that kid at school who insisted his nickname was ‘Party Animal’, but it’s a statement of intent if nothing else. Rather like launching five new EVs in the space of a few years, you could say.