JLR scraps plan to source EVs from Tata Motors plant in India

According to a Reuters report, JLR could not strike the balance between cost and quality with India-made EV parts for the electric cars it planned to source from Tata Motors’ upcoming factory in Panapakkam, a town in the Ranipet district in the state of Tamil Nadu. The company met local suppliers in November last year and requested quotations from some of them.

A person familiar with the change in Tata Motors and JLR’s cooperation for EV production in India said that the companies suspended everything on the project about two months ago. Beyond concerns over the price-quality mix, JLR also factored in the global slowdown in EV demand when scrapping the plan.

Last September, Tata Motors announced a targeted annual production capacity of 250,000 units for the Tamil Nadu plant. According to the report, the company planned to allocate more than 70,000 of them to JLR EVs and 25,000 to Tata Passenger Electric Mobility (TPEM).

TPEM currently sells Tata-branded electric cars derived from Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles (TMPV)’s ICE models and is working on bespoke EVs based on JLR’s EMA platform with a plan to launch them under the new Avinya brand by March 2026. Tata Motors planned to manufacture JLR and TPEM’s EMA platform-based EVs in Tamil Nadu using shared components. With JLR
backtracking from the original plan, TPEM now faces challenges and may have to delay the launch of the first Avinya model.

The report also said that TPEM is changing the design of Avinya EVs, however did not cite any reasons for doing so. According to a report from Autocar India, the company is planning five Avinya variants, including a Sportback inspired by the 2022 Avinya concept as the inaugural product, an SUV derived from the Avinya X concept as the second model, and a three-row flagship SUV.

reuters.com, tatamotors.com (MoU with Tamil Nadu), tatamotors.com (new Avinya design), autocarindia.com