Tata Motors to have two Pure EV platforms to drive its EV business, unveils new Gen2 EV architecture

Having hit the ground running with Internal Combustion Engine platform derived electric vehicles, Tata Motors, the country’s largest electric car company is planning to come out with two pure electric vehicle architectures as it seeks to build a portfolio of 10 EVs in the coming years.

With a premium EMA architecture with Jaguar Land Rover announced late last year, Tata Motors on Friday announced that the company’s all-new Pure EV compact vehicle architecture called ACTI-EV or ACTIV which will power the upcoming Punch, Harrier, Curvv and Sierra EV in order to deliver the optimum space and performance of a born electric vehicle.

With fresh competition likely to hit the roads in the coming 12 months, Tata Motors is readying itself to protect its over 80% share in the emerging electric vehicle space. The likes of Maruti Suzuki, Hyundai Motor India, Kia and Mahindra & Mahindra are all set to introduce their mainstream EV offering in the marketplace.

Speaking to Autocar, Anand Kulkarni, Chief Products Officer, Head of HV Programs and Customer Service, Tata Passenger Electric Mobility Ltd, “We have announced our Gen 3, which is in collaboration with JLR on their EMA architecture, which was the premium pure EV architecture. The Gen 2 architecture ACTI-V we are announcing today is a pure EV architecture, which, of course, not only helps us support multiple body styles but enhances the ability to give increased ranges, and improved efficiencies. And essentially, ups the game in terms of technology, performance, capability on our next generation of electric vehicles.”

While Kulkarni was non-committal on the investment of the pure EV architecture, industry experts say for the development of a grounds-up electric vehicle architecture including industrialisation takes anywhere from $500 million to $1 billion. And the quantum increases with different body styles or top hats.  

To be sure, Tata Motors has already announced $2 billion investments in its Tata Passenger Electric Mobility Ltd – its EV arm and the company is also readying the manufacturing line dedicated to EVs at the Sanand plant acquired from US carmaker Ford Motor Company.

During the current calendar year, Tata Motors will be launching the Punch EV, Harrier EV and Currv EV which will be based on the Acti-EV Gen 2 architecture.

Kulkarni says the Acti-EV architecture has four critical layers -the first layer is a  powertrain designed from an EV perspective, the second layer is the chassis, which underpins all the components, the third layer is the Electrical and Electronic architecture and the fourth layer is the cloud architecture, which is becoming increasingly important in today’s connected the world.

The Gen 2 architecture has been widened in order to provide orthogonal battery packs with 10% and higher volumetric efficiency on the energy content, which can help the company provide driving range solutions between 300 kilometers to 600 kilometers, on its existing cells.

This is future-proofed and with the deployment of new generation high-energy density cells, the company will be able to enhance its capacity by 10% more, informed Kulkarni.

"Because it is a wider and orthogonal battery pack, it allows us to go for different cell chemistry and its form factor agnostic, which will enable us to do significantly more differentiated solutions. The architecture also has the ability to package multiple power train layouts," he added. 

It can offer a front wheel drive, rear wheel or even an all-wheel drive depending upon the size and the expectation or the requirement of that specific product. It supports flexible AC charging up to 11 kilowatt and DC charging up to 150 kilowatts.

The layer 2 of the architecture which is the chassis has been designed for optimized performance with robust crash structure to deliver five-star safety ratings. The company has utilized a higher percentage of ultra-high-strength steels for not only weight efficiencies, but also for meeting the strength requirements, this has also helped the company to create a new interior package that is focused on space efficiency with its flat floor.

The layer 3 is on the electrical and electronic architecture. We have a high compute unit powering future-ready architecture. The digital cockpit experience is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon digital chassis platform which can deliver futuristic HMIs to suit the requirements and the preferences of customers in the various categories of vehicles that this architecture can work on.

The architecture is L2 ready and the company will be able to explore to expand it to L2 plus as and when the product's needed. And there is OTA (Other The Air) capability which comes in as a standard feature on the architecture.

"On the software and the cloud, obviously it has cutting edge connectivity and it is an architecture ready for 5G. And we will also be able to integrate a third-party app suite in order to provide more flexibility and preference to our customers. So all put together, these are the four layers which will come together," explained Kulkarni.

To be sure, Tata Motors had announced that it will be adopting the Gen1, Gen 2 and Gen3 approach – which aimed at progressively building EVs and its performance attributes from ICE converted EVs to pure ground up electric vehicles.