India’s new EV policy not suitable for JLR: Tata Motors' CFO Balaji

Tata Motors Ltd believes India's recent electric vehicle policy, which promotes domestic EV manufacturing and reduces import duties on certain electric cars, is not aligned with Jaguar Land Rover's India strategy, and has no plans to utilize that policy to expand the British luxury brand's business in India.

"At this point in time, the specific EV policy is not something that is suitable for us. So we do not intend to leverage it," Tata Motors' Group Chief Financial Officer PB Balaji told reporters on Thursday when asked about how JLR plans to leverage the new policy.

The government, in March, unveiled its new EV policy that drastically reduces the import duty on certain completely built-in units (CBUs) of electric cars to 15% from the current 70-100% for five years, provided the automaker invests at least Rs 4,150 crore, or US$500 million.

The policy requires the companies to set up manufacturing facilities in India with a minimum investment of Rs 4,150 crore and start commercial production within three years. There is also a clause on domestic value addition – the manufacturers will have to achieve a 25% domestic value addition within three years and further increase it to 50% by the fifth year.

"We will continue to look at opportunities in CKD (completely knocked down unit) manufacturing to ensure that we get the same benefits of the 15% customs duty, without taking on additional obligations in terms localisation and bank guarantees," Balaji said, adding that the JLR evaluates CKD operations as more attractive, given its size and scale in India at this point.

As per the new policy, the investment commitment made by the company will have to be backed by a bank guarantee in lieu of the custom duty forgone. The bank guarantee will be invoked in case of non-achievement of domestic value addition and minimum investment criteria defined under the scheme guidelines. At present, India levies duty in the range of 15-35% on CKD imports, depending upon the vehicle type.

JLR has been pushing India sales recently, with plans to increase localization. The company is looking at India as a critical manufacturing hub amid ongoing India-UK Free Trade Agreement talks. The brand has recently localized the assembly of Range Rover and Range Rover Sport.

"Currently, JLR India's business is growing very strongly. We have just localised the manufacturing of Range Rover and Range Rover Sport, and we are seeing a huge pick up in volumes. As volumes pick up, we would want to keep increasing localisation as much as possible," he added.

Currently, JLR has a facility in Pune that assembles imported CKDs or CBUs of Range Rover Velar, Range Rover Sport, Evoque, Jaguar F-PACE, and Land Rover Discovery Sport. Autocar Professional exclusively reported that Tata Motors, which is merging JLR and India passenger vehicle unit, is likely to produce electric vehicles of JLR from a proposed plant in Tamil Nadu.

In the initial phase, the plant is likely to have a manufacturing line of 2 lakh units for producing EMA architecture-based electric vehicles for JLR and Tata Motors.