Tata Motors aims to revamp its passenger car portfolio with variants and refreshes. A new design language is also likely on the cards.
Tata Motors is putting together multiple strategies to climb up the ladder in the passenger vehicle market. The No 3 is gunning for the number two spot, and has ambitions of being the leader. One of the key areas the company is working on is design. “We’ve worked hard to build our capability in-house at Tata Motors,” Dr Tim Leverton, head of advanced and product engineering, tells Autocar Professional. “We have probably doubled the capacity on style and design. About a year ago, I created under an umbrella, a single organisation, Tata Motors Design, so we have a focused organisation working on this aspect,” he adds. The entire team at Tata Motors Design is “about just under 150.”
Tata Motors Design has a global spread – a design centre each in Pune, Turin (Trilix Srl) and in the UK (European technical centre). Trilix Srl, acquired by Tata Motors for 1.85 million euros in October 2010, has a team of about 50 people. To achieve results from team members sitting in various geographies, it is important that they understand the company’s vision and talk the same language. To ensure that, a ‘strong core internal team’ has been set in place. Tata Motors Design has also expanded its facilities in Pune. “I think as a standalone unit, our Indian operation now is probably one of the biggest design operations in India in terms of modelling capability and design capability,” says Dr Leverton. The Tata Pixel and Mega Pixel concepts are the centre’s first creations. While these are interesting designs, the real output from the newly integrated team is likely to be seen in a few months’ time, Dr Leverton says. “I think in the next few months, you’ll start to see that. This car actually was designed in our UK studio,” he adds.
Dr Leverton, who had a role at Land Rover earlier, sees synergies between Tata and Jaguar Land Rover projects, though not directly in product technology as there is a positioning gap between Tata and JLR products. “But if we look at the engineering standards, the processes of doing the engineering and looking at component technologies, then there are areas where we can probably do research projects together and transfer some of the know-how and spread the cost of some research work,” says Dr Leverton. Was there any cooperation with Land Rover while developing the new Safari Storme? “Not really,” says Dr Leverton, except for the experience of Land Rover that some people like him brought into the Storme project.
Compact SUV segment beckons
Tata Motors is bullish about the Safari Storme’s prospects. The SUV was launched last month and is positioned in the Rs 10 lakh range. However, the emerging compact SUV segment offers the opportunity to tap a new set of customers. “We see also that to be a very important segment in the market, and we’re studying that at the moment,” says Dr Leverton. He sees a customer desire for vehicles with SUV characteristics like driving position and ground clearance but not necessarily with all the capability of off-highway driving. These wants may be met by different solutions that could be lightweight, and more fuel-efficient than a true-blue SUV. “That’s a tendency which has emerged in other markets also, and I think therefore we would want to serve that opportunity in the future,” says Dr Leverton. A Tata compact SUV can hit the roads in “the next few years”.
Tata built the first indigenously-developed car, the Indica and also made the first move in the Indian ‘SUV’ space with the Safari, 14 years ago. But in recent years, the nameplate has had to contend with strong rivals. With a strengthened R&D team and enhanced capabilities, Tata has planned several strategies. “We are rolling over the next years a range of new products which will excite the market,” says Dr Leverton.
INTERVIEW WITH DR TIM LEVERTON, HEAD – ADVANCED AND PRODUCT ENGINEERING, TATA MOTORS
How much has been carried over from the X1 Platform, to the Safari Storme?
It’s called the X2 Platform. It’s basically carrying across the technology from the Aria underpinnings. So the chassis and frame is a substantial upgrade from the original Safari product. Its stiffness is about two-and-a-half times that of the previous Safari. The suspension and the braking equipment and really the whole driveline installation are at a much more refined level. So it’s a very significant upgrade in the vehicle’s feel and dynamic performance.
The Storme is 75kg lighter than the old Safari on a 4x4 vehicle and that’s really come from a more weight-effective frame and platform.
The Sumo platform is also due for a change. Will that happen?
No. I think the Sumo continues to have strong demand and strong pull in the market, and we’ve upgraded it in the last months and made it very comfortable to drive and given it more performance. I think the challenge for all of us is to get the best fuel economy and cost of ownership that can be achieved. So therefore, reducing weight is going to be one of our key challenges. But retaining the capability and ruggedness of our products is important. So we’ll do some of that with better powertrain technology and some with better structural solutions as well.
I think the market is growing very quickly and there are a number of sub-segments. We continue to see a place for the Sumo but maybe there are additional products which can serve emerging segments in terms needs for lower cost of ownership and lightweight vehicles.
Tata brand cars have taken a few knocks with others becoming more aggressive and competitive. From an engineering perspective, how would you address this?
We are facing intense competition from multinational companies as well as established companies in India. We have not been with our own innovations in terms of the Nano being an obvious one. We need to offer our customers more appealing products, probably more aspirational ones. We need to focus on design and strengthen and build on the things that we’re renowned for in the market — interior space and package efficiency is one of our hallmarks, and we will continue to offer that. But with good performance, good handling and at price points which are not very competitive in the market, so that’s something which we plan to do and which will become clear as we move forward in the next few years.
How do you plan to enhance design of Tata vehicles?
We’ve worked hard to build our capability in-house at Tata Motors and really we have probably doubled the capacity on style and design. We’ll also continue to work with other renowned designed houses because that helps also keep people fresh with ideas. Cars like the Tata Pixel and the Tata Mega Pixel, were the first concept cars created completely in-house. They were based on our own engineering concepts; the design styling was done in-house across our network and things like the HMI (human-machine interface) were built out of our electronics department. So that’s something which has started to express really the direction that we’re capable of moving in. I think we’d be very pleased with the critical reaction that we had to those projects.
I’m very clear in my mind that what we’re seeing perhaps has been a traditional distinction between products which have been available in Asia and in India, and products that have been available in Europe or US.
We are really seeing a convergence in tastes and global design. So nothing less than world-class design is going to be okay for our customers in India, and that is our objective.
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