Tata Punch EV Launch: How Tata Motors Plans To Conquer 65% "Entry EV" Market | MD Shailesh Chandra

See, if you see the entry EVs, the entry EVs when I say it, are the cars which are less than ₹12 lakhs. And why we have taken that ₹12 lakh? Because 65% of the vehicles, cars in the country get sold below ₹12 lakh, which means nearly 33 lakh vehicles are being sold in that segment. Electric vehicles are being only sold 500,000.

Which is only 1.6% penetration, whereas in greater than 12 lakh, electric vehicle penetration is 10%. So we saw that entry segment was facing this challenge of low penetration. And if you don't penetrate electric vehicles in 65% of the market, then there is no adoption of electric vehicles in the country. And therefore in these two years, a lot has happened on the cost side. We have been seeing the battery prices have come down. The cell prices have come down. The design innovations have increased. The scale and localization has been helping reduce the cost. So we said if we are getting these benefits on the cost side, why not move towards what a customer desires? What a customer desires? They require at least a car which can do intercity drives and not just city drives. A car which gives you comfort of lifetime warranty. A car which can charge fast as you are on the highway, you don't want to waste too much time on the highway. So I took these three briefs and said let us see if we can push the current range of a Punch from 250 km to 350 km, provide lifetime warranty at the same time, bring the cost very compelling.

Since in any case, the ICE version has been launched. There is already a strong momentum. There is a lot of work that we have done there. So we bring it as first as form possible.

See, the rationale of the pricing was, as I said, that it has to come closer to the ICE prices. Automatic cars of the same size and in the same category. So as I said, 9.69 is more or less when you calculate the on-road price you will see versus CNG, more or less it is the same in terms of on-road price when you take the MT version. Hmm.

So we have come very close to the price parity that was needed. So that was the intent behind this kind of a pricing.

And yes, to some of the earlier customers, you know, we have been trying to offer different kind of schemes and all those are ongoing schemes. And you know, some of the electric vehicles, you know, customers are buying that depends on model to model.