Tata's "Big" EV Gamble

Cammy Corrigan
by Cammy Corrigan

In Europe, governments are ramping up their electric car programmes in order to usher in a new era of alternative propulsion vehicles. Some more successfully than others. And just as the countries are doing their part, the automakers are doing theirs. GM has an Ampera (or “Volt”, as our North American friends will know it as) in the offing while Nissan preps the Leaf. Much has been made of this fight, in part because it is playing out globally. But in Europe another contender is looking to steal the march on GM and Nissan: Indian upstart Tata Motors.


The Independent reports that Tata are aiming to launch 2 electric vehicles (EV) in the UK by September or October and in Scandinavia by March 31st 2011, thereby beating their competitors to market. Tata’s EV champion is the Tata Indica Vista EV, which was unveiled at the 2009 Geneva Motor Show, and has a Lithium Ion battery and a range of 200km. American readers might remember the Indica Vista EV from the Automotive X-Prize, where it made the finals before mysteriously disappearing over “technical issues”. What those issues were is far from clear, but given that Ratan Tata sits on the X-Prize board, one might guess that his namesake team was allowed to make a graceful exit.

The second EV is a compact pick-up truck called the Ace EV, but that was declared as in an “advanced state of development” by Ravi Kant, Tata’s vice chairman. By which he possibly meant “development outside of a $10m efficiency competition contested by (among others) high school and college student teams.”

Tata also added that they will watching the Indian market for signs of EV readiness, but they’re not holding out much hope. The said that whilst Scandinavia has the infrastructure for EVs and the UK has charging stations under development, India’s is “practically absent”. And it could be that way for a while, unless the private sector get involved. India is 76% the size of the European Union. Of its 1.2 billion citizens, 128 million do not have access to water and 839 million have no sanitation. Building an EV infrastructure probably isn’t all that high on the Indian government’s priority list.

Cammy Corrigan
Cammy Corrigan

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  • Tstag Tstag on Aug 19, 2010

    TATA are actually investing a lot of money in what they call disruptive technologies. A disruptive technology is something which will give TATA a big push into the mainsteam high volume car market. These technologies range from EV's to cars running on compressed air. TATA is developing many of these technologies through a technology center they have built at the Uni of Warwick in England, their R&D facilities in India and also the JLR who have a significant development programme of their own. TATA are also planning to use JLR production facilities to make these EV's for the European market..... TATA have a plan!

  • Niky Niky on Aug 19, 2010

    "Building an EV infrastructure probably isn’t all that high on the Indian government’s priority list." Ya think? They can't even get them to buy the world's cheapest car... getting an EV infrastructure up is going to be problematic, to say the least. And yet, I respect Tata for at least daring to dream big, and going where most companies fear to tread. Whatever the eventual market penetration and success of the Nano, they're forcing Maruti and others to take a look at that end of the market, to try to go lower. If the Indica works out, they may spur the Chinese or other budding manufacturers to get really serious about their electrics, instead of relying on the cobbled-together Chinese-kit-car stuff they're peddling now.

  • Lorenzo Are they calling it a K4? That's a mountain in the Himalayas! Stick with names!
  • MaintenanceCosts It's going to have to go downmarket a bit not to step on the Land Cruiser's toes.
  • Lorenzo Since EVs don't come in for oil changes, their owners don't have their tires rotated regularly, something the dealers would have done. That's the biggest reason they need to buy a new set of tires sooner, not that EVs wear out tires appreciably faster.
  • THX1136 Always liked the Mustang though I've never owned one. I remember my 13 yo self grabbing some Ford literature that Oct which included the brochure for the Mustang. Using my youthful imagination I traced the 'centerfold' photo of the car AND extending the roof line back to turn it into a small wagon version. At the time I thought it would be a cool variant to offer. What was I thinking?!
  • GregLocock That's a bodge, not a solution. Your diff now has bits of broken off metal floating around in it.
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