Tata Motors Ltd expects demand for its electric commercial vehicles (CVs) to remain strong and continue to grow with a strong order book in place across segments, according to its Managing Director and CEO Girish Wagh.
The company also expects supply chain bottleneck regarding cells imported from China that has impacted its Intra EV, to be resolved completely by the end of the ongoing quarter, he told analysts.
“On EVs, the demand outlook is quite positive,” he said.
In the first quarter of the fiscal year, on the electric commercial vehicles front, Tata Motors had over 3,400 vehicle orders across segments, building on the momentum it saw in the second half of last year.
In addition to that, Wagh said, “As a part of PM-eBus Sewa, there are a few more newer tenders which are also on the way. We are quite positive on that.” He pointed out that the electric small commercial vehicles (SCV) pickup, which is completely in the retail market, is doing very well.
“The TCO (total cost of ownership) parity of Intra, Ace Pro has become very attractive in comparison to their ICE (internal combustion engine) ‘brothers’. Therefore from that perspective, the demand will remain strong and will continue to grow,” Wagh noted.
Commenting on Tata Motors’ capacity of supplying electric EVs, particularly ‘Intra EV’, he said, “In-house capacity is not a challenge at all. What has happened is not only our electric vehicle demand has gone up, which is therefore leading to a cascading increase in demand of cells from China, but even within China, the share of electric vehicles has further gone up.” It has led to increased demand on the cells, he said, adding that it became a bottleneck, thereby resulting in the lead time for the demand or lead time for getting the cells in India and converting into batteries becoming “pretty high”.
Wagh, however, added, “We have placed higher set of orders already around two months back. So, towards the end of this quarter, we should have the supplies completely debottlenecked from the perspective of the demand as we see.” In the first quarter of FY27, the company had witnessed over four-fold increase in electric SCV at around 3,200 units, along with over 850 EV buses order in hand.
