Mahindra and Mahindra is gearing up to produce 6,000 units of its new Scorpio, christened Scorpio-N, every month. The company says it is better prepared to handle the demand that the new car will generate than it was for the new XUV 700, which still has a waiting period of 18 months.

The company continues to face chip shortages though the situation has eased from August-September last year, said Rajesh Jejurikar, executive director, farm and auto division, Mahindra and Mahindra.

The new Scorpio-N launched on Monday is a feature-rich car with 70 plus apps that will retail from Rs 11.99 lakh onwards. The car is being offered at introductory prices for the first 25,000 bookings. Asked how it is going to handle the production of a tech-heavy car such as the Scorpio-N with the current chip supply situation, Jejurikar said it was prepared with a production strategy. “We did not anticipate the demand for some of the top variants of XUV 700 that comprises 90 per cent of the bookings. We have learned from that experience and have put our suppliers on alert for Scorpio-N,” he said. The Scorpio-N will be produced at the company’s Chakan facility while the Scorpio Classic is being manufactured at its Nasik facility. The XUV 700 has a backlog of 70,000 units with “9000 fresh bookings coming in each month”, said Jejurikar. The company will continue to sell its old Scorpio as Scorpio Classic because it “still has a huge franchise”. “The old Scorpio has a market in the semi-urban and rural areas and we will continue to sell the model like we continued to sell the Bolero and the Bolero Neo. We don’t anticipate any cannibalisation in sales because of this,” Jejurikar added.