interview with shailesh chandra, Managing Director. Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles Limited

Thank you.

See, in the high SUV segment, this car has completely changed the experience for a consumer by taking quantum leaps in every aspect. Let me go one by one. One is on the performance itself. Typically, you will get around 350 Newton-meters of torque in this segment, but in this car, you get 500 Newton-meters of torque, allowing you to go from 0 to 100 km/h in just 6.3 seconds. So the performance and thrill you get is number one. The second thing is that the comfort is also at a different level. We have provided a very special kind of suspension in this, which we call the Ultra Glide suspension. Taking the frequency from the road, it judges how to dampen it. So when you sit inside, it completely gobbles all the undulations on the road. So this is another feature taking comfort to the next limit. If I talk about technology, for the first time, we have provided a Samsung QLED screen. Generally, you don't see QLED in cars, right? Along with that, there is Dolby Acoustics. If you sit inside, you can sit with popcorn because you get a proper theater-like experience in it.

After that, if I talk about other new experiences in this car, you saw that during the launch when I arrived in the car, I was sitting in the back and there was no driver. So Summon Mode is provided. You can summon the car out using a remote. There is automatic parking and a 540-degree view. You usually hear about 360 degrees in cars; 540 means you can even see underneath the car because it has off-road capability. Or if you are going to park and there is a dog or a cat there, you can see that something is there and avoid harming them. There are many such features in this car. So if you look at performance, comfort, and the immersive experience through technology, it is at a different level. I would also mention the electric architecture. Although the top hat is the Harrier because the Harrier is a very popular and widely accepted body style and brand that people desire, which is why we retained it, if you look at the underpinnings, it has completely changed. This is a pure EV architecture, which we call Acti.ev Plus, where we had to provide all-wheel drive and a flat battery pack to accommodate a 75 kWh battery pack that delivers a real range of 500-plus kilometers. So that architecture has completely changed. It is also a software-defined vehicle, which means you can continuously push updates to this car through the cloud, enhancing features over time. You have seen worldwide features emerging because of software-defined vehicles, so technologically, it has advanced significantly.

Look, this is the result of our hard work over five to six years. We were working on localization. At every stage, we were looking at component design to see how it was being globally optimized. For instance, in power electronics, significant compactness was achieved—moving from three-in-one to five-in-one, and then seven-in-one. Through design, we reduced costs in power electronics. While cell costs were coming down, there is also the cell-to-pack cost, on which we did tremendous work. We worked on cost across every element. Furthermore, regarding localization, the PLI requirement demands domestic value addition above 50%, and this vehicle has a very high level of localization. All of this went into managing its cost. Secondly, there is support from the government. Its GST is 5%, whereas for this car in the ICE world, GST is between 45% and 50%. We utilized that benefit to provide this advanced technology and a larger battery size. That is why, despite offering so many features, we have been able to maintain price parity with automatic ICE cars. That is how it became possible.