After years of exploring synergies, Tata Group companies Tata Motors and Jaguar Land Rover have finalized the plans to manufacture electric vehicles in India for the global markets, marking a significant step in the history of its car business.
Natarajan Chandrasekaran, chairman of Tata Motors and the Tata Group, told Autocar India that JLR and Tata Motors will have two different models from one platform. “We will also be exporting from Sanand. So Tata Motors will talk about their exports in the next 12 months. We have bigger aspirations, let me put it that way, for JLR and Tata Motors,” he added without giving away any more details on what products are likely to be jointly produced
The chairman of the Tata Group said he wants a culture of openness and innovation to explore possibilities. “We can bring the cost attitude of Tata Motors with the design and sophistication of JLR. If we can do that, we will be in a sweet spot. Then you get the benefit, accruing two different ways, and the volumes go up, which justifies the investment into the platform. So, it may not be individually viable for Tata Motors to make that investment, and JLR volumes may not be enough. We are talking about not only the platforms but also the electric and electronic (E/E) architecture”
The Sanand facility in Gujarat becomes an ideal choice, given that the EMA-based Avinya car is scheduled to be made at the Gujarat facility. Given the strong vertical integration emphasis to keep the cost low, Sanand also becomes a default choice, given that the group’s battery-making facility, the Tata Agratas, is coming up in Gujarat.
The proximity to the port and key inputs like batteries made in Gujarat add to the competitiveness of the EMA platform. There is speculation that Tata Motors is looking at setting up a plant in Tamil Nadu specifically for JLR, but the same has yet to be officially announced.
Tata Motors has committed to investing over a couple of billion dollars in electric vehicles until the end of the decade under its Tata Passenger Electric Mobility (TPEM), and Jaguar Land Rover has a defined CAPEX roadmap of over 15 billion pounds or Rs 1.5 lakh crore in the next five years.
India will become a key node for global manufacturing for JLR, with capacities in the UK, China, and East Europe already redefined with a strong focus on electric vehicles.
Last November, Tata Passenger Electric Mobility Ltd (TPEM) and Jaguar Land Rover Plc (JLR), both 100 percent subsidiaries of Tata Motors Limited (TML), entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the licensing of JLR’s Electrified Modular Architecture (EMA) platform for a royalty fee (including electrical architecture, electric drive unit, battery pack, and manufacturing know-how) for the development of TPEM’s ‘premium pure electric’ vehicles series ‘Avinya’ on the EMA platform.
TPEM and JLR were to enter into an Engineering Services Agreement (ESA) to support TPEM’s change content requirements for the first vehicle development. This was officially announced: JLR’s EMA platform will underpin its next generation of ‘pure electric’ mid-sized SUVs for international markets, launched from 2025 onwards.
P B Balaji, Tata Motors’ group CFO, said in November last year that this EMA architecture will be used for the company’s upcoming premium range of EVs, which will be based on the company’s showcased Avinya concept. He elaborated that Avinya is not just a car but an architecture likely to spawn a family or range of electric vehicles.
The ‘Avinya’ concept was first showcased in 2022 and is Tata Motors’ vision of how electric mobility for the future will be engineered to provide a class-leading in-cabin experience with generation-next connectivity, ADAS, performance, refinement, and safety.
Access to JLR’s EMA platform will help accelerate TPEM’s entry into the high-end EV segment while reducing development cycle time and costs. JLR’s advanced E&E architecture can reach L2+ autonomy with all advanced connectivity, comfort, and convenience features.
Further, it will accelerate TPEM’s adoption of Software over the Air (SOTA), Features over the Air (FOTA), safety (5 Star Euro NCAP Rating), and ultra-fast charging technologies for high-performance vehicles.
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