Tata Motors to focus more on expanding EV category than on retaining market share, says top official

Tata Motors' management team in front of TATA.ev store at Sohna Road

Tata Motors is focussing on expanding electric vehicles as a category rather than trying to retain its 75 percent market share in the segment as competition hots up with new launches by rivals.

“For us, market share is not the priority. For us, the priority is (Electric Vehicle) segment growth,” Vivek Srivatsa, head of marketing, sales and service strategy at Tata Passenger Electric Mobility, told reporters. “So our focus and all our actions will be focused on category expansion.”

EVs accounted for about 5 percent of total vehicle sales in India between October 2022 and September 2023, Bain & Co. said in a report dated December 7. That share could account for more than 40 percent of India’s automotive market and generate over $100 billion of revenue by 2030, it said.

As part of its strategy to focus on category expansion, Tata Passenger Electric Mobility, a subsidiary of Tata Motors, launched Tata.ev stores in Gurugram to cater solely to EV customers.

“We need to really reinvent how we engage with our customers. So that's the objective of this store,” Srivatsa said. “We've seen that EV customers have a very different kind of expectation in terms of both buying experience and post-purchase experience.”

Sales target

Srivatsa said Tata Motors expects to sell about 100,000 electric cars in the current financial year, about double the sales of 50,443 units of battery-driven cars in the previous fiscal.

“For the calendar year, we're looking at about 70,000 units. We think the last quarter of the financial year will be strong. So our mission remains strong. So the ambition of 1 lakh units for this financial year remains on track,” added Srivatsa.

According to Srivatsa,  Tata Motors took 44 months to sell the first 10,000 EV units and in 19 months, it crossed the 50,000 mark.

“Hopefully, in less than nine months, we will be able to sell 50,000 units,” noted Srivatsa.

The company has sold 115,000 units since it started retailing electric cars in 2020. While Tata Motors has seven petrol and diesel passenger cars in its portfolio, its Nexon, Tigor, Tiago and XPres-T are offered as electric variants as well. He said sales of EVs have grown on the back of new launches.

“When we launched the Tiago EV, we doubled our volumes. Before that, when we launched EV Max, we saw a significant increase in numbers. Now also with the new Nexon (EV), we've seen significant growth. We have quite a few launches planned in the next 12 months,” he said.

More e-SUVs

Over the next 12-18 months, the company has lined up electric Sports Utility Vehicle (e-SUV) launches across segments such as Punch EV, Sierra EV, Harrier EV, and Currv coupe EV.

Without sharing any timelines for the launch of these models, Srivatsa said, “A lot of EV manufacturers in the international markets make sedans. But even among them, SUVs are popular. We have seen the same in India as well. We're the only ones who have an EV sedan in the mainstream market. But customer preferences are clearly towards SUVs.”

Srivatsa was also categorical that EVs will post unprecedented growth despite not being subsidised. The government’s Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Electric Vehicles (FAME) scheme that offers subsidies to encourage sales of EVs is set to end in March next year.

“We all understand that the FAME is temporary and an EV industry or a category cannot run on subsidy. It has to be self-sustaining,” Srivatsa said. “What the government can do is it can seriously influence charging infrastructure and probably promote localisation.”

Srivatsa said Tata Motors aims to attain net zero carbon emissions by 2040, with EVs accounting for 50 percent of total units produced by 2030. He noted that EVs currently account for 10 percent of total passenger vehicle sales