PUNE: Tata Motors on Thursday partnered with Bangalore-based Zoomcar to offer its electric compact sedan Tigor to customers in Pune. The company also said it expects to deploy at least 500 such vehicles across 20 cities that Zoomcar is present in by the end of the next year.
“The future of mobility will increasingly be connected, shared and powered by zero-emission technologies. Tata Motors is strongly committed to this transformative journey and working with all like-minded partners to accelerate the enabling ecosystem,” said Shailesh Chandra, president- electric mobility business and Corporate Strategy, Tata Motors.
Greg Moran, co-founder and CEO, Zoomcar said, “this marks the beginning of a dynamic partnership within electric mobility and we expect to touch 20 cities and 500 electric vehicles with Tata over the next year.”
This is the second such tie up for Zoomcar in the last year. Last year, it had formed a partnership with Mahindra & Mahindra to offer its e2O plus across Mysore, Hyderabad and Bangalore. Mahindra also picked up a 16 per cent stake in the firm for 176 crore in February this year.
Tata and Mahindra are the only two companies manufacturing electric cars in India right now. While Mahindra offers Mahindra’s e-Verito and e2O in the EV segment, Tata’s e-Tigor, has not been commercially launched yet. Both companies won part of the 10,000 unit EESL’s 2017 EV tender.
The Tigor EV faced some criticism this year with reports suggesting it was not giving not a satisfactory range even when fully charged. Tata refuted the claims, saying an overnight charge will still provide a 130 km range.
Charging technology remains conundrum
The type of technology that will be installed in public charging stations remains a question in India. For now, sources say that the Centre has asked charging stations to install ports that are compatible with both Chinese and Japanese standards.