Tata Motors, based out of Mumbai has announced it plans to sell 50,000 EVs by next March 31st, the end of the fiscal year. The announcement was made the the company’s chairperson, Natarajan Chandrasekaran on Monday during a shareholder’s meeting.
Looking forward to the 2023/2024 production year, Chandrasekaran said Tata intends to sell 100,000 of its vehicles, which include passenger cars, trucks, vans, coaches, buses, luxury cars, and even construction equipment.
India has initiated a national plan designed to make sure that up to 30% of all passenger car sales in India will be electric by the year 2030. At present only about 1% are electric. Among e-scooters and e-bikes, sales will have to be even higher, at 80%, compared to just 2% today.
India maintains tremendously high import duties on EV’s so if those numbers are to become reality, it will have to come from local Indian production, and not importation.
Tesla had made an attempt to enter the Indian market, but Tesla tests markets using imported units before committing to building factories in the market to supply it. As a result of India’s strict anti-import policies, Tesla was unable to test the market through importation and decided to not commit to any operations in the country. Transport minister Nitin Gadkari when asked had said Tesla was welcome to build a factory in the country, but they are not welcome to import any units.
Tata’s EV line currently includes the Nexon EV, Tigor EV and the newest Nexon EV Max. Rather than reengineer an entirely new EV, Tata has chosen to minimize costs for the consumer by repurposing an existing internal combustion vehicle they already produce, the Nexon, simply adding electric motors and battery packs to it. While its starting price of $19,000 is certainly not cheap by the standards of India, it is an affordable option for the nation’s upper-middle class.
Tata already sells 90% of all Indian electric car sales, and it appears they will easily make their goal of selling 50,000 EVs y March of 2022. June sales numbers show the company delivered 45,197 total units, out of which about 3,507 were electric models. That is a 433% rise for the 658 models it moved last year.
Chandrasekaran noted that he was was optimistic about the coming year, given how supply chains have improved, and especially how the semiconductor industry is finally ramping up production and beginning to meet its demand.
