Tata Motors to Go Big on Hybrid and Electric Vehicles

With rising pollution levels and the Indian government implementing policies to tackle the same, Tata Motors is shifting its focus on to hybrid and electric vehicles. The company is now working on partial hybrids and fully-electric systems for its future range of passenger and commercial vehicles, despite Tata's diesel-powered models accounting for most of their sales in India.

According to a report in Business Standard, it is also developing a new generation of petrol engines which don't pollute the environment as much as their current power units.

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The Indian carmaker has obviously been affected by the recent ban on diesel cars and SUVs with engine capacity above 2,000cc in Delhi from January 1, 2015 till March 31, 2016, with the possibility of other Indian cities implementing the ban as well.

Speaking about the company's hybrid and electric vehicle plans, Timothy Leverton, President and Head, Advanced Product Engineering, Tata Motors said: "We have worked across, for our passenger and commercial vehicles, on hybrid technologies and battery electric technologies. The barrier to electric technology is the high cost of batteries. Battery costs have started to come down. The rate of reduction of cost is accelerating. We have always seen hybrids as a path towards this type of technology and we will see this getting integrated into our future vehicles."

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Tata Motors has been experimenting with electric vehicles for quite a few years. "We actually ran a fleet of Vista electric vehicles in the UK couple of years ago and did a year-long trial on the UK roads," Leverton added.

Nick Fell, Director and Head, Tata Motors European Technical Centre PLC also elaborated on the company's future plans in this direction, saying, "We are commissioning a battery assembly pilot line in Pune, which gives Tata Motors an in-house source for this commodity."