Mahindra’s first global pick-up will arrive in Australia by mid-2026 aimed directly at the top-selling Toyota HiLux and Ford Ranger for the first time.

Speaking to Australian journalists at Mahindra Research Valley in Chennai last week, Mahindra’s Vice President of International Operations, Joydeep Moitra, said the replacement for the aged Mahindra Pik-Up will be a top-three ute Down Under by 2030.

“Mahindra’s major export volumes come from Pik-Up and we believe that this is a category that Mahindra has a right to build in, so we’re going after all the established brands,” he said.

“I won’t name them for obvious reasons, but we went to Australia, we went to South Africa, and we benchmarked the top-selling ones and we are aiming for number one, number two and number three – top three brands in the country,” said Moitra.

Asked to clarity if that ambitious target refers to performance and capability or sales and market share, Mahindra Australia general manager Ankit Taneja said: “Top five in ute segment by 2030 in volume and market share after global pick-up launch.

“Yes, [our] aspiration [is] to be a household brand by 2030 by sales and market share.”

In addition to the lofty sales target, high-ranking Mahindra officials confirmed several key new details about the Indian car-maker’s second-generation ute, including a bigger 3.5-tonne towing capacity and a more powerful turbo-diesel powertrain that delivers enough grunt to compete with volume-sellers like the Ranger and HiLux, but no off-road performance flagship to compete with the Ford Ranger Raptor.

Previewed in August by the Mahindra Global Pik Up Concept but yet to be formally named, the replacement for the utilitarian Mahindra Pik-Up, which dates back to 2006 (2009 in Australia), is due to be launched globally in 2025, when watered-down Euro 7 emissions regulations are due to be implemented in Europe.

Mahindra’s first all-new ute in 17 years will be underpinned by a modified version of the new ladder-frame chassis that underpins the latest Mahindra Scorpio large off-road SUV and available in single-cab, space-cab and dual-cab forms.

Mahindra executives said the company’s first global pick-up will look very similar to the 4×4 dual-cab concept revealed in August, which was described as “very close to production – what you see in the real car”.

Mahindra’s global head of automotive technology and product development Ramasamy Velusamy told Australian media the new ute’s ladder-frame “has similarity” with the Scorpio’s, “but many things are different”.

As we’ve reported previously, Mahindra’s new ute will be partly developed in Australia to ensure it’s competitive in one of the world’s three biggest mid-size ute markets.

From launch, the new Mahindra pick-up will be powered by an uprated version of the Scorpio’s 2.2-litre four-cylinder turbo-diesel engine, which currently develops 129kW/400Nm but will be upgraded to produce closer to the circa 150kW/500Nm outputs of the top-sellers.

Pulling a calculator out and drawing equations on papers in front of him, Velusamy said the company’s two-year-old 2.2-litre mHawk alloy-block turbo-diesel is capable of producing up to 450Nm.

Velusamy stopped short of revealing the exact power and torque figures expected for the new ute, but said 450Nm would be enough to compete with the volume-sellers in the ute market and to allow the Pik-Up replacement to deliver the 3500kg towing and 1000kg payload capacities now expected in the segment.

“Right now, the global pick-up is planned with [a] diesel powertrain. There will be a petrol for some of the petrol markets, but primarily with the ute you are expecting 3.5-tonne towing and you won’t get that with a petrol,” explained Moitra.

Asked why a hybrid powertrain won’t be forthcoming – not only for the new ute, but any new Mahindra models – Moitra said the company decided years ago to transition directly from the internal combustion engine (ICE) to full battery-electric power, skipping intermediate options including hybrid.

“At Mahindra, this is a conscious call that we had made many years back,” he said.

“We have [a certain] amount of bandwidth in terms of workload [that] we can do and clearly our strategic choice was to have clarity on ICE and electrics and not sort of be everywhere and spread out our resources.

“That way we can have our resources to be completely focussed and faster to market.”

However, Mahindra has a range of new EVs and electric vehicle technologies under development and Velusamy did say a battery-electric version of the new ute was more likely for Australia, where there are EV incentives in most states and the where federal government will soon announce a new Fuel Efficiency Standard that could further incentivise the release of EVs.

“Whether to choose the hybrid powertrain or electric powertrain it’s a matter of what the Australian government agencies do. I think you have electric car incentives but not for hybrid so therefore you try to go electric, not hybrid,” he said.

Just as Mahindra benchmarked its new Scorpio against the Ford Everest and Toyota Fortuner, Velusamy said the Indian car-maker used the Hyundai Santa Fe to benchmark its new XUV700 mid-size SUV before purchasing a trio of Skoda Kodiaq SUVs for further tests.

“We thought Santa Fe was best, so we purchased three Santa Fes and began testing and ultimately found Santa Fe is not best. So then we bought Kodiaq. Skoda Kodiaq,” said Velusamy.

“Then I opened the [Kodiaq] suspension, put the suspension back-to-back [with Santa Fe] and then we realised ‘oh, the Germans are really making it work.”

When it comes to the new ute – currently known as the Global Pickup – Velusamy said it would be tested against all of the popular utes sold in Australia, such as the Ford Ranger, Toyota HiLux and Volkswagen Amarok.

He stopped short of naming specific manufacturers but said there would be “one of every Australian ute” at its SUV Proving Track (MSPT) in Chennai.

“Whatever you see in Australia, you will see is there,” said Velusamy.

“We have a very elaborate process of setting targets for us,” said Arun Kushwah, head of product planning at Mahindra.

“We pick up all popular vehicles from the market, we drive them through an extensive syllabus and then try to [narrow down] which are the cars that really come close to the positioning we want to take in [the] market,” explained Kushwah.

“We are in the process of setting targets now, so we have a range of vehicles. So, we’ll be driving these cars and setting targets for ourselves. And then there’ll be a clear benchmarker.”

Velusamy said there was also a Ford Ranger Raptor at MSPT, but Kushwah insisted that Mahindra will continue to focus on value before it looks into performance.

“We basically do not want to specialise in things like that. We want to play into the high-volume segments in which the value makes sense,” he said.

“We will be the very few ones to come up in timeframe with the [new] ANCAP [2025 standards] and also the new emissions [standards] will be out.

“Probably we will be a bit ahead of the curve in terms of market products.”

Regardless of the technology and capability advances it brings, Velusamy said Mahindra’s new ute will continue to offer strong value in Australia’s fiercely competitive ute market.

“We don’t want to get into competition, we create our own market,” he said. “It’s better to create a market than create a product for the existing market”.

Like all of its direct competitors, the new Mahindra ute will – as previewed by the concept vehicle – be available with a number of genuine off-road accessories, such as lifted suspension, rock rails and a rear sports bar.

Apart from a 3500kg towing capacity, a full range of body styles and the latest ADAS safety technologies to achieve a maximum five-star safety rating, Velusamy said the new Mahindra ute would bring high levels of “connectivity and big screens”, although he didn’t specify whether that will comprise the dual 10.3-inch display seen in the XUV700 or the full-width triple-screen arrangement coming for other future Mahindra models.

Velusamy said the chassis architecture, suspension layout and both the exterior and interior designs have been completed.

But cautioned that a significant amount of development work still needed to be done in terms of validation and crash testing, which he said would take place in Australia, before the new Mahindra ute’s planned local launch date in June 2026.

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