New EV launches to boost consumer confidence, says TaMo's Chandra

With several mass-market carmakers unveiling their electric vehicles (EVs) at the Bharat Mobility Global Expo on Friday, Tata Motors, the leading player in the EV segment, believes this will significantly boost consumer confidence, countering the "gloom and doom" narrative surrounding the segment over the past year.

 

"I believe that the growth should now be tremendous, and if it does not, then it's a problem for all," said Shailesh Chandra, head of passenger vehicle (PV) and EV divisions at Tata Motors.

 

Chandra, who is also the President of the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM), said: "The competition has come a bit late, but possibly it is also coming at a time when EV prices are coming closer to internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle prices, primarily because the battery cell price has significantly reduced."

 

"From the time we launched our Nexon EV for the first time, this has gone down by 50–60 per cent. Therefore, if you remember the price at which we had launched a 30-kilowatt-hour Nexon, it is the price at which we launched a 45-kilowatt-hour Nexon. So we have used the reduction in cost to give a higher range because that's the barrier which was left," he added.

 

About 99,165 electric cars were sold in India in 2024, recording 20 per cent year-on-year growth, according to the Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations (FADA). Tata Motors is the leader in the electric car market with about a 62 per cent share.

 

"Competition is a good thing because it is going to expand the market. For the last one year, EVs were under stress because globally, everybody was talking about electric vehicles in a very negative way. A 'gloom and doom' scenario, even globally, was being portrayed. And therefore, as a consumer, you will get confused whether this is the right time or whether you should even consider buying an EV," Chandra stated.

 

"If all the manufacturers are launching EVs, the consumers feel confident that this is possibly the technology of the future as it is not only backed by one manufacturer. There will be collective work on the ecosystem (charging, etc.). It will also give a lot of confidence to those entrepreneurs working on the ecosystem side because all the manufacturers are now coming in. So I believe that the growth should now be tremendous, and if it does not, then it's a problem for all," he added.