Team-BHP - Tata Motors gets government order for 10,000 Electric Vehicles (beating Mahindra & Nissan)!

Quote:

Originally Posted by abhi7013 (Post 4318735)

Your post seems to imply that these factors effect only electrics and not a conventional car. Now i hope you weren't serious.
Range of an electric car is as important as the mileage of a regular one.

Correct. But electric cars need to be worried the most because of the very limited range they have. I thought it was obvious. Hence did not go for an elaborate post. :)

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Originally Posted by sgiitk (Post 4318738)

I am wondering whether there ia also a hidden agenda, of supporting a defence supplier. Happens in the US (and elsewhere!?) all the time. Tata is a major defence contractor.

So is Mahindra but no, i don't think so.

Had that been the case the DRDO would have won the tender on the basis of a 'pipe-dream' quote submission wherein the Govt. agency will develop an electric car that does a 1000 miles on a 15 min recharge and 10k be delivered in 6 months! Albeit 10 years of development, a working prototype displayed ages ago, thousands of crores of public money spend in R&D, the Govt. will still be waiting for the first batch of cars!

I would prefer domestic players like Tata and Mahindra anyday.

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Originally Posted by chennai-indian (Post 4317904)

Tata has had an EV programme ( as R&D) for quite a few years now mostly in the UK. I have seen Tata Bolt EV and even a TATA VISTA Ev testbeds so I assume that some amount of testing has been done before these vehicles were rolled out. Also, it is a good thing that the Govt is doing by nudging the industry to start making EV's and commercializing them down the road.

As far as I understand, majority of EESL's large/bulk procurement tenders come with 7 years Repair and Maintenance contract with a warranty of at least a year. So reliability in terms of maintenance and service shouldn't be an issue as manufacturers would have already factored in such costs.
I also hear some rumours that the company intends to get into some big tie ups and acquisitions for battery technology.

In addition to RaghuVis's post:

Specific to the EESL order, the Tigor EV will be delivered in three trim variants - Base, Premium and High and will be available in 'Pearlescent White' colour with blue decals. Over the basic requirements of the tender, the Tigor EV, across the variants, would have FATC (Fully Automatic AC) to provide maximum comfort to its occupants.

For phase 1, Tata Motors is required to deliver 250 Tigor EVs, for which it has received a LoA.

Source: Economic Times

A lovely step for India, good for the Govt and great for Tata's. The photos above are a poignant reminder to all those skeptics and critics out there and on T-BHP too. Nation building and developing national capabilities are very different than a private sector job or business that most of us are in and use as a yardstick to measure the efficacy or policy of Govt vision. All electric by 2030 might not be feasible but we need a goal to work towards. This is a very encouraging milestone for a country that till about 20 years ago had not even designed and launched a successful car and which in 1990 had only 50.7 lakh phones.

Great to see TATA start delivering the Tigor EVs clap:. The electric drive system is developed by ElectraEV. There are not much details on the website and it seems to be registered in May 2017.
http://electraev.com/

Now that these are being delivered, why is TATA not revealing the specs. They need to at least provide the details like battery capacity, range, charging times etc...

Does no one have photographs of the interiors? I don't know what's the reason behind Tata not giving more details than a few PR photos. I guess, we will have to find someone from EESL.

Also, Tata could have saved some money on those rims, by providing steel wheels and wheelcaps. Maybe they are just on the 'PR photo' car.

And I am surprised to see an EESL badge on the boot! What's that about?

That socket logo is so cute!

Quote:

Originally Posted by sgiitk (Post 4318738)

I am wondering whether there is also a hidden agenda.

Yes there is! Trust the govt. to order a lot of cars (bulk deal), which would not have been possible if Tata sold this car to the public. This way, Tata gets a hands-on feedback, niggles, complaints and improvements from the users.

Even if Tata barely breaks even on this deal, they are bound to use the knowledge gained from this in their future EVs. A large order ensures that the company has enough to work with while keeping the over all per car costs at a respectable level.

Can't wait to see the Tigor EV on the streets.

It appears EESL plans to procure around 5 lakh EVs in the next 3-4 years. Here is what they say on their website:

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Our role
Despite introduction of the technology decades ago, there are barriers which have hitherto not allowed the industry to flourish. Factors such as low demand, high financial risks for the industry, high cost of ownership for consumers, lack of awareness of benefits, absence of charging infrastructure and factors like range anxiety have inhibited adoption.

To overcome these challenges, our innovative business model of bulk procurement, demand aggregation and payment model called Pay-as-you-save, will help the industry and customers switch to electric vehicles with much ease. The model of EESL ensures zero dependence on subsidies for introduction of transformative solutions. EESL makes the entire up-front investment for adoption of the transformative solutions, making it an attractive market.

As a beginning, will procure and deploy electric vehicles in government offices across the country. It is estimated that the replacing these 500,000 cars with EVs over the 3-4-year period will lead to fuel savings of about 8000 million liters, 10 million tons of CO2 reduction and 28,200 crore of annual fuel savings.

This model will provide an impetus for Indian vehicle manufacturers, charging infrastructure companies, fleet operators, service providers, and the industry to gain efficiencies of scale and drive down costs, create local manufacturing facilities, grow technical competencies for the long-term growth of the EV industry in India. It will in turn enable the Indian EV manufacturers to emerge as a major global player.

An order of 5 lakh cars will surely help build an infrastructure and help the manufacturers bring the cost down for ordinary citizens like you and me.

Can't wait to see how this plays out.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sebring (Post 4322973)

Did you guys watch The Grand Tour Season 2? In the first episode, Hammond drives an EV sports car the Rimac which explodes on impact - due to a chain reaction in the batteries. Used to think battery tech was safe till I saw this.

Yea, The Grand Tour is awesome. You can find many cases of batteries of mobiles exploding and since EVs also use batteries, there is a risk of them exploding into flames in an accident.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sebring (Post 4322973)

Car fires are a common phenomenon in high speed crashes. Chances are BEVs catch fire less vigorously than a gasoline car since they don't leak and gasoline is way more energy dense than batteries (~9 kWh per litre whereas the biggest batteries is only about 100 kWh).

http://www.nfpa.org/News-and-Researc...s-and-patterns

This is the case of Contrast effect (wiki that). Car fires are so common, it rarely becomes news, unless it happens to be on news!