Homegrown carmaker Tata Motors, which occupies nearly 70% of India’s electric passenger vehicle sales at present, expects sales of EVs in India to grow 30-40% in 2024 (calendar year), after nearly doubling in size in 2023, a top company official said.
Tata Motors is lining up three new models for launch in 2024, which will be offered at “new” price points, expanding its current range of passenger EVs, and will fall in the broad range of ₹8-30 lakh.
“There are a lot of new model actions lined up for next year. I believe that now that the base of the EV market will be large at nearly 90,000 to 1 lakh cars, on this base a 30-40% growth should be good,” Shailesh Chandra, managing director of Tata Motors’ passenger vehicle and passenger electric mobility divisions said.
This year, the passenger vehicle market is expected to clock a total of 4.1 million units in sales, a growth of 7-8% over 2022, while for EVs the growth will be roughly double, about 90-100,000 units compared to close to 50,000 units in sales last year. Further in 2024, Chandra expects a sub-5% growth for the passenger vehicle market as sales touch all-time high levels this year.
“We aspire to grow faster than the market because we are adding new products this year, we had a big challenge in the last two years where we didn’t have a new product”, he said, adding, “For EVs, we have seen growth rates really get triggered by new models at a more affordable price. We saw a 100% growth this year, because last year average price points for EVs were around ₹17-18 lakh with the Nexon being the leading product in the market. Then, in January this year we launched the Tiago, which generated a lot of volume growth from its affordable price point (sub ₹10 lakh),” he said.
Chandra believes the biggest impediment to EV adoption is the underdeveloped charging infrastructure in India, fixing which is a scenario that will play out over the next two years.
“…What is stopping people from buying an EV as a first car is primarily bottlenecks around charging. And things which are going to really help that aspect be overcome is, one, next year onwards you’re going to see higher range vehicles come in… and once you cross a real range of 400 km, charging anxiety will come down. That will give the freedom to people to own a car which is not only limited to city use but can be used for inter-city drives that should lead to increased adoption,” Chandra said.
He cited that multiple charge point operators (CPOs) and OMCs, which are mandated to put up 82,000 chargers by the end of 2024, are investing heavily to create charging infrastructure that will alleviate concerns around charging, adding that Tata Motors is working with CPOs to identify optimal locations to place charging points along routes that are most used by users of EVs.
Tata Motors expects that as EVs occupy a wide variety of price points, from ₹8 lakh to over ₹30 lakh, adoption will increase, even as IC or internal combustion-engine vehicle prices increase and EV prices come down, benefiting from lower cost structures at scale and efficiencies in sourcing with newer iterations and improved technology in the vehicle.
Tata Motors is opening up new, EV-exclusive showrooms and experience centres as it sketches out a new EV brand identity. It aims to open more than 50 such EV storefronts in the next 12-18 months.
The first of the stores will open up in Gurugram in early January in the National Capital Region, one of the company’s largest micro-markets for electric vehicles.
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Published: 22 Dec 2023, 12:33 AM IST