EV presents a significant opportunity for Engineering & IT services cos

Soma Tah

Pawan Bhageria, President- Tata Motors SBU, Tata Technologies tells PCQuest how Engineering and Technology service providers can play a crucial role in India’s EV story

As a tech solution provider to the OEMs, what kind of opportunity and roadblocks  do you see for the EV uptake vis-a-vis ICE vehicles in India?  

The EV industry in India is still at a nascent stage, but has potential to emerge as the preferred option for multinational automotive players. The Indian Government has laid out ambitious plans and supporting policy frameworks, regulations, incentives for this segment.  

EVs present a significant opportunity for Engineering and IT services providers also. Technology service providers like Tata Technologies and others can play a significant role in lightweight body design, battery packaging, battery management systems, design of motors and other critical components. They can also play a big role in enabling efficient manufacturing facilities adopting smart manufacturing technologies like IoT, AI/ML, and advanced communication technologies.  

However, critical components of EVs such as the battery, motors, controllers are being imported from China, low availability of battery charging infrastructure and primitive charging business model and range concerns continue to be challenges- which must be addressed for easier and faster adoption of EV in the country.  

"Adoption of battery swapping and battery rentals as a business model will significantly reduce the TCO and make adoption of EVs easy"

Cost remains a biggest barrier to EV adoption, what kind of policy intervention, govt. incentives, and innovation is needed to overcome this issue? 

Yes, there has to be a concerted push from regulatory authorities towards greener cars. Policy intervention has to come on three broad fronts:

Financial – covering areas such as streamlining of GST, Import duty, subsidies, electricity rates, toll rates and EV financing among others; 

Regulatory – covering areas such as common technical standards, charging infrastructure, land use, battery recycling and other areas; and 

Adoption in public transport – the government can procure an EV fleet for government offices and lead from the front.  

Thankfully, the Indian government is taking steps in the right direction to streamline its EV policy such as proposals to bring EV financing under priority lending, increase FAME II subsidy and extend the timeline by one year, etc. The National Electric Mobility Mission Plan 2020 and India’s participation in the global EV30@30 campaign are also a right move towards achieving the target. 

Adoption of battery swapping and battery rentals as a business model will significantly reduce the  total cost of ownership (TCO) for cars and will enable early adoption of EVs. As it is still early days for EVs in India, traditional ICE vehicles seem more cost-effective. However, with increasing production, reduction in battery costs and improvements in charging and related technologies, it is expected that the price of EVs will come down drastically in the coming years. Broad educational initiatives are also needed to help buyers understand the TCO over the EV life cycle compared to traditional diesel and petrol vehicles.   

As Tata Technologies is already working with automobile companies and OEMs on various EV projects, could you tell us about some of the technology innovations for the EVs you have done so far? 

Tata Technologies has been at the forefront of EV engineering by helping automakers from India and across the globe design lightweight 5-star NCAP bodies, battery packaging, battery management systems, and other critical components for EV. We are increasingly investing in Embedded and software capabilities as companies ramp up investments in electric and connected cars. The electric powertrain is an identified focus area and you will hear more interesting innovations around this area from us in the coming days. Tata Technologies is also focused on modularization as an approach for efficient mass production of EVs.

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