Geneva
Celebrating 20 years of showcasing cars at Geneva International Motor Show, Tata Motors, India’s largest automobile company by revenues on Tuesday premiered its most ambitious car ever, the E-Vision sedan concept, which will eventually become its flagship saloon for the brand in the Indian market – a.k.a – a Tesla of India.
Based on the Land Rover Discovery platform internally coined the Omega architecture or ‘Optimal Modular Efficient Global Advanced’ Architecture , in collaboration with Jaguar Land Rover, the E Vision is a large saloon like a Toyota Camry designed to have a range of 300 km per charge which can drive from 0-100 in 7 seconds. The premiere also happens on a day when Jaguar launched its all electric I-Pace for the lay users.
This is by-far the boldest statement made by Tata Motors which sees majority of its vehicles to be electrified by 2022 (including mild-hybrids, hybrids and battery operated fully electric vehicles) and Jaguar Land Rover has already announced that post 2020 all of its vehicles will come with some form of electrification.
“The E-Vision Sedan Concept is one of the most definitive and aspirational product by an Indian OEM and will be a game changer, reiterating our commitment to offer world-class design, technology and drive the EV revolution to build a sustainable future,” said Guenter Butschek, MD of Tata Motors on the side-lines of the unveiling.
Interestingly, Tata Motors’ Indian rival, Mahindra & Mahindra too is partnering the Italian design house Pininfarina – which it acquired a couple of years back – to develop a sports electric vehicle in the coming years.
Leveraging on the strength of the OMEGA architecture, the E-Vision Sedan Concept is built on a modified, dedicated EV architecture – a modular, scalable and flexible architecture to address the range of performance attributes for long-range travel with new age interiors.
The company also showcased the H5X and 45X SUV and premium hatchback at the Geneva International Motor Show – which were premiered in the last month Auto Expo in Greater Noida.
Developed under the new Impact 2.0 design language, these concepts offer attractive exteriors, luxurious interiors, with intuitive features which are future ready from connectivity and infotainment perspective aimed at the growing aspirations of the customers, claims Tata Motors.
Butschek says the company is committed to the Indian Government’s mission of electric mobility. And Tata Motors is operating on three different levels of electrification.
First is the plug and play solution with Electra EV – which will power lower voltage vehicles like the Tiago, Tigor, Magic, Iris and Ace, second is to modify the new age of Alpha and Omega architectures for electrification that offers longer range and faster vehicles and with the building of scale, Tata Motors in the mid to long run is looking at a dedicated electric vehicle architecture.
The E Vision concept is likely to be taken up with the board this month and if the project is approved, it is likely to the hit the road between 2020 to 2022, informed Butschek.
Having worked on electric vehicle solutions on Nano, Vista, Manza in the past at the Tata Motors European Technical Centre in UK, the company is likely to use these learnings to implement the solution in two new modular platforms in the future.
