It doesn't cost 9 lakhs. It costs 19 lakhs (about 23,000 USD). Tata cars never had solid build quality nor blindly trusted by Indians. Please state facts with sources than making false claims
The source[1] I found immediately showed a range from 8.5 to 11.8 lakh. If you're going to criticize someone for not providing facts and sources, you should do the same yourself.
I drive a Tata Nexon EV 30kwh battery, 3.5 KW charger which I bought for Rs 1.6 million (16 lakh). The new ones with 40kwh battery, 7 KW charger costs Rs 1.9 million (19 lakh). On road is lesser due to subsidies (not sure if there are any active subsidies).
Tata Tiago is priced much lesser. I would be vary of range as advertised (unlike many other countries). My car gives me practical range of 220 kms and the advertised range is 312 kms. I drive at 115 to 125 WH per km, my wife drives at 135 to 150 WH per km.
Tata cars are heavily built man. They are rock solid, have great safety ratings and many prefer them for their build quality.
What I understand is that in India
- Buy Maruti for efficiency and low cost of spares and service
- Buy Tata or Mahindra for build quality and sturdiness
- Buy Honda / Hyundai for good engines but high cost of spares and service.
I was originally going to bring up previous experiences (years ago) watching crash tests with Indian-market Tata cars being pretty much nightmares in crash tests, but looking at their recent stuff it doesn't look half bad. Good on all those engineers working hard to deliver a good product and save lives. If these EVs being talked about are on similar design platforms, they're probably pretty decent safety-wise.
You realize Tata's latest cars have the highest safety rating in India, right ?
All the Korean-Japanese makers otoh are selling sub-standard "tin-cans". Anyone who knows Hindi can check out what Indians broadly think of Tata (as opposed to say, Suzuki) on Youtube.
Yeah, I don't know if I would associate Tata cars with "solid build quality, and blindly trsuted".. Cheap, less safe, but made for Indian roads - sure..
India's car industry is a bit of a sad story. The market is flooded with cheaper cars that would never think of showing up to any safety tests. The Volkswagens, Toyotas, and Fords that do come to the market are "made for India" models which means they are severely handicapped in the safety department in order to cut the costs to compete. VW at least a few years ago when I knew would sell you the same car platform, but good luck trying to get service for it anywhere in India without paying near German costs.
I have been living outside India for a long time, so my impressions may be outdated.
I mean, something has got to give. Of course we can also shift the goalpost by adding safety to any degree (and then we could do the same with the average gas driven cars used in the region you are looking at).
However, the claim merely stated: "EVs are definitely going to remain a first-world item for my lifetime at least". It's pretty safe to say, looking at what we already have and how quickly it scaled in the last years, that this is complete nonsense and will be increasingly so.
I don't excuse less safety-minded construction, but a lot of what makes modern cars in the West safer is equipment like side airbags, traction control, cameras and sensors, which in turn costs money. Construction standards haven't changed much since the invention of monocoque chasses.
Also, most traffic in India and other 3rd-world countries drives at much lower speeds than in the US etc.
Costs Rs. 9 lakhs, about 11,000 USD. They give a 7 year battery warranty.
For coty commutes, which is most of car usage in India, this is a perfect spot.
And Tata, has proven EV tech, via its Nexon EV range (400 km range, 22000 USD for the highest end version).
Tata cars have solid build quality, great resale value and are blindly trusted by many Indians.