Tata to Base "Global" Range of Cars On Advanced Modular Platform That It Says Will "Leapfrog" VW's MQB
According to Tata Motors’ managing director, Karl Slym, the company is developing a new modular platform, to be the basis of a “global” range of vehicles that it claims will “leapfrog” VW’s MBQ technology. The new vehicles will be rolled out over the next six years.
Though Tata has had more success selling commercial vehicles than cars, Tata says that it is going to build a family of world class passenger vehicles based on what it’s calling the Advanced Modular Platform (AMP). Tata badly needs new product to replace an ageing lineup of cars which has been doing poorly as the Indian market has experienced a downturn.
Tim Leverton, Tata Motors’ head of R&D, told the Sydney Morning Herald that it had taken VW “six or seven generations” of products to get to MBQ, but that Tata would “go directly to a very interesting solution” and “leapfrog” the Volkswagen group. Leverton said that the AMP is scaleable in both length and width, making it possible to use the platform for a variety of size vehicles, from subcompacts to crossovers.
The Indian press is reporting that Slym said that the company began planning to make Tata a global automotive brand last year and that all of the cars in the pipeline based on the AMP are being designed for sale globally and will meet applicable emission and crash standards.
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I pray to God that they don't mess up with JLR with anything. I am besotted with the XF and XJ designs and would buy in a heartbeat if I could afford one. I know of Tata's car quality first hand. Their entire lineup reeks of cheapness/ built to a price/ had to cut corners....there is no sense of pride in their cars. They are fairly durable but definitely not a driver's car by any stretch of the imagination.
Doubt that they can pull it off. It looks like they don't have much for the market to chew on for their current numbers so they threw this out. VW's MQB is a logical extension of everything that they've being doing. Tata is no where close to anything in that league. What does Faisal think of this?
It took VW very many years and many billions of dollars in order to create the MQB. If Tata manges to do the same with less time, less capital, less experience, and less cost, I'll be very surprised.
We started with the basic Oldsmobile assembly line, refined by Ford, then just-in-time, then MQB, then Chrysler-Fiat's variable width/variable length assembly, and now AMP. Maybe TTAC should look into the development of the auto assembly line, and separate the true innovations from the wannabe's.