Tata Motors expects EV Fleet sales to double in 2023 to 15,000

With an aim to expand the addressable market with a new range of electric vehicles for the personal buyers, Tata Motors - the country's largest electric car maker, continues to enjoy strong traction in the fleet market.

With an orderbook of over 40,000 cars, Tata Motors forecasts its fleet sales will more than double to 15,000 units in the current calendar year. This would mean the fleet sales may account for 12-15% of its total sales of 1 lakh units it is targeting for the current financial year.

Much like the plans to ramp up production for the new Nexon EV - Tata Motors is looking to increase output for its Tigor Xpress T EV from 500-600 units a month to 1000-1250 units per month by the end of the year.

Tata Motors at present has confirmed orders from Blusmart Mobility for 10,000 units, Uber Technologies for 25,000 units, Lithium Urban Technologies for 5,000 units, and the rest from medium to small electric mobility fleet operators may also add up to a few thousand units.

"We sold close to 6,000 to 7,000 electric vehicles last year, and we expect the numbers to improve to the 12–15,000 range in the current year," said Shailesh Chandra, Managing Director, Tata Passenger Electric Mobility, on the sidelines of the facelifted Nexon EV launch in Delhi on Thursday.

The traction is driven by last mile shared mobility start-ups which are in an aggressive fleet up ramp up phase.

In the first half of 2023, the electric vehicle market in India saw a surge in funding activity, with startups raising over US$ 700 million from various private equity and venture capital funds.

BluSmart, which operates over 5000 electric cabs in Delhi-NCR and Bengaluru, has raised US$ 110 million. The E-mobility start-up has a fleet of Tiago and Tigor EVs from Tata Motors besides rival models Hyundai Kona Electric, MG ZS Electric, and a Mahindra e-Verito. O2 Mobility, Bengaluru based corporate fleet start-up plans to replace its 50 e-Verito with Tata Xpress-T EVs.

O2 Mobility caters to MNC clients such as Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), HCLTech, GlaxoSmithKline, CommScope, and TE connectivity are showing strong interest in converting their existing ICE-run fleet for corporate employee transportation to electric.

"At O2 Mobility, we currently have a fleet of 500 vehicles spread across two states, with 10% of them being electric." In terms of vehicle preference, we are seriously considering refurbishing our existing fleet with Tata Motors fleet vehicles,"  O2 Mobility Founder Rahul Pravindra told Autocar Professional.

Pravindra also stated that as demand grows, the company expects "OEMs to offer greater choices to increase the percentage of our EV fleet year on year."

Snap E Cabs, based in Kolkata, has 400 Tata Tigor Xpress T Electric Cabs on the road. The West Bengal based ride-hailing app is in the process of signing an Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Tata Motors for all Tigor Express T EV fleet cars in order to add 600 more cabs. Snap E Cabs' Founder and CEO Mayank Bindal told Autocar Professional that his company will be investing about Rs 22 crore.

Tata Motors' XPRES-T electric sedan comes with two range options: 315km and 277km (ARAI-certified range under test conditions).

The electric vehicles share has increased from 9% of passenger vehicle unit sales in FY2023 to more than 13% in five months of FY24, according to Vahaan data.

"As battery prices fall and competition launches more vehicles, the share of electric powertrains in overall passenger vehicle sales will only increase," said Chandra.

Tata Motors has stated that the share of EV sales for the company will increase to 25% of its total volumes by 2027 and 50% by the end of the decade.