India’s new EV policy not suitable for Jaguar Land Rover: Tata Motors 

The new electric vehicle by the Indian government is not suitable for Jaguar Land Rover, P Balaji, Group CFO, Tata Motors told reporters on Thursday. According to Balaji, as the company’s volume will grow, the company will increase the localization of JLR. 

“Currently, the plans as far as JLR India are concerned, I think the business is growing very strongly. And we have just localized the manufacturing of Range Rover and Range Rover Sport, and we're seeing huge pickup in orders on that front. So we would want to as volumes pick up we will want to keep localising the extent possible. And if the policy environment we are able to leverage upon we will definitely consider it. At this point in time that specific policy is not something that is suitable for us. So we don't intend to leverage that at this point in time,” says Balaji.

“At the same time, we will continue to look at opportunities of CKD (completely knocked downunit) manufacturing to ensure that we take the same benefits of the 15% customs duty without taking on additional obligations in terms of both localization as well as bank guarantees and for good ones to take, we continued the multi vendor system. operation as more attractive given our size and scale in India at this point,” he adds. 

In April this year, the government introduced new EV policy where in global automakers are required to make a minimum investment of ₹4,150 crore ($500 million) for a period of three years for setting up manufacturing facilities in India and reaching 50% domestic value addition (DVA) within five years at the maximum.  According to the policy, the customs duty of 15% would be applicable for a period of five years. 

Meanwhile, Tata Motors reported a 72.43% increase in its net profit at ₹5,692 crore in the Q1 of FY25, as against ₹3,301 crore in the same period last year. The company’s revenue from operations surged 13% to ₹1.08 lakh crore in the quarter under review as against Rs 1.02 lakh crore in the same period last year. 

In terms of JLR, the company recorded the highest-sales of 1,371 units in Q1, witnessing a growth of 31% year-on-year. According to Balaji, the company expects some amount of constraint in production owing to the shutdown of its plant in the UK and the aluminium supply chain issue. The company has earmarked an investment of ₹1.9 trillion by FY28 for its JLR portfolio.