Electric car form TATA Costly then Tata Nano - says rathan tata on global warming day

Indian conglomerate Tata Group Chairman Ratan Tata has said that Tata Motors will have an electric car in the market by September this year.

"We will have an electric car in the market in September," Tata was quoted as saying by Cornell University on its micro-blogging feed on Twitter. Tata is also a Cornell trustee.

He talked about the electric car at the Cornell Global Forum on Sustainable Global Enterprise organised by the university.

In 2008, Ratan Tata speaking at the Annual General Meeting of Tata Motors said that the company was developing an electric car.

Foreign media also reported quoting Tata at the forum that Tata Nano, dubbed as the world's cheapest car, is expected to be available in the US in the next two years.

The much-awaited Nano was commercially launched in March in India and is expected to hit the roads soon.

According to the university website, the Tata Education and Development Trust committed USD 50 million to Cornell in October 2008 to establish the Tata Scholarship Fund for Students from India and the Tata-Cornell Initiative in Agriculture and Nutrition, intended to improve the lives and livelihoods of India's rural poor.

At Tata Motors' annual general meeting this week chairman Ratan Tata told shareholders about an electric car partnership project with Norway, with the car to launch in Norway within the next 12 months, according to Swedish weekly Ny Teknik, and India afterward. Calcutta Telegraph said Tata will use its Indica platform for the development of its electric car, not the no-frills, $2,500 Nano, which is scheduled to start rolling off production lines in September. Tata is currently working on five prototypes of electric vehicles, the Telegraph said, with lithium-ion batteries and an approximate range of 200 kilometers. Indica is a full-size highway-ready car, but Tata hasn't said whether the Indica-based EV will also be full-sized or an NEV (neighborhood electric vehicle), or given price signals.

Scandinavia cornering electric vehicle market?

Tata's electric car is supposed to be initially assembled in Norway, which seems a bit strange given the country's high wages compared to India. On the other hand, with THINK and the Kewet Buddy under production and Miljøbil Gronland working to continually beef up the infrastructure of fast recharging stations, Norway has some accumulated EV competence.

Reva electric car's strong sales

Tata earlier partnered with Chrysler's electric vehicle unit Global Electric Motorcars (GEM) to develop and market an electric version of its light commercial vehicle Ace for sale in the United States, according to Germany's Spiegel Magazine. Spiegel also said India's electric car maker Reva has sold 2,500 units, including 1,000 in the UK, and is hiking capacity to 30,000 units by December from 6,000 now.

Tata's mystery electric car partner

THINK thus far gave no indication that it was Tata's EV partner, nor did Kewet, according to Ny Teknik. But Miljøbil Gronland, though refusing to give any details, did say it "has a project with India" according to Ny Teknik. Owned by government-owned Norsk Hydro, Miljøbil Gronland has a fleet of different EVs and hybrids that it leases to Norwegian consumers.