Breaching the cost barrier with technology applications

Anand Kulkarni, Vice President, Operations at Tata Passenger Electric Mobility reveals to Autocar Professional the inside story of India’s cheapest electric car, the all-new 2022 Tiago EV to Amit Vijay M

- Amit Vijay M

It’s no secret that Tata Motors seems to be able to develop new cars at relatively lower costs compared to many other car manufacturers. Currently, there are 12 electric cars on sale in India. Of these, the Tata Tiago EV is the cheapest (micro cars excluded). Strong technical capabilities and the extensive infrastructure of the manufacturer has made this possible. One of the key USPs of Tiago EV is its entry price point.

How was the Tiago EV conceived? What advantages did you have since an ICE version of the Tiago already exists?

The Tiago EV benefits significantly by being configured and built based on an existing mainstream product. This enables the capacities to be fully harnessed straight from Job. Also, now that this is the third product on the Ziptron architecture, there is a very strong library of parts that are available readily for use on the Tiago EV. Along with that, since the volumes of EV’s have been rising significantly, there have been a lot of volumerelated benefits that have been utilised. Finally, on this product, we have designed, developed and validated most components with domestic suppliers, leading to additional benefits.

The benefits of using existing architecture parts, allows us to utilise previously validated and established strategies, making validation faster. Secondly, the reliability of the parts is already known and hence we can get to data judgement milestones faster. This helps in reducing development Capex as well as optimising the test regime.