Tata didn’t just update Tiago.ev. It draws on feedback from 75,000 owners and 2.3 billion kilometers of real-world experience to rebuild it from the inside out. New cars charge faster, are safer to drive and come with a lifetime warranty.
Mr. Anand Kulkarni, Chief Product Officer, Head of High Voltage Projects and Customer Care, Tata Electric Passenger Vehicles
For years, buying a car in India meant making a choice – choose petrol for reliability, CNG for economy, or electric for the future. Tata Motors has decided that buyers of the new Tiago won’t have to make that choice at all.
Launched today at a price of just Rs 4.69 lakh for petrol, iCNG and electric variants, the new Tiago also comes with battery-as-a-service, a first in the segment, with electric variants priced as low as Rs 2.6 per km, with the battery cost completely separate from the car price. It’s an ambitious attempt to make electric vehicles accessible to the widest possible audience, and the details deserve close attention.
Lessons on the road
Thirty-two months is a long time to listen. Since the launch of the first-generation Tiago EV, Tata Motors has sold 75,000 units, seen customers drive more than 2.3 billion kilometers, and quietly collected one of the most detailed pictures of real-world electric vehicle usage in India. In many ways, the new Tiago.ev is the product of listening.
Speaking to this publication, Mr. Anand Kulkarni, Chief Product Officer, High Voltage Projects and Customer Care, Tata Passenger Cars Electric Vehicles, said the data clearly illustrates the situation. Around 60% of Tiago electric car owners drive around 200 kilometers per week – comfortably on a single charge. The other 30% is about 400 kilometers and may require charging twice a week. But increasingly, car owners are also using their cars for intercity trips—not epic 600-kilometer journeys, but regular 100- to 200-kilometer journeys to nearby cities or towns. For these car owners, the time it takes to charge the car begins to become very important.
Recharge, reimagine
Mr Kulkarni said Tata’s answer to charging anxiety was the most significant engineering change in the new Tiago.ev. The fast charging capacity has been doubled and the total charging time has been reduced by half, saving car owners approximately 30 minutes per charge. More realistically, cars can now add 100 kilometers of range in just 18 minutes – about the time it takes for a comfortable break and a cup of tea at a motorway stop. For someone who regularly commutes between two cities, he said, this completely changes the calculus of owning an electric car.
Achieving this requires changes beneath the surface. The battery chemistry is still lithium iron phosphate (LFP), known for its stability and longevity, but the formula has been modified to accept faster charging without generating excessive heat or stress. The battery management system has also been updated to handle higher charging rates safely and efficiently.
Lifetime warranty
The second big move is to address a question that every potential electric car buyer will ask at some point: What happens to the battery in a few years? The carmaker has answered that question by offering first-time buyers a lifetime battery warranty – “a commitment that now applies to its entire electric vehicle portfolio”. It’s an important announcement, one that Tata believes will do more to democratize electric vehicle ownership in India than almost any other single decision.
Stronger from the inside out
Security is significantly improved. The new Tiago.ev is equipped with six airbags, which is a meaningful improvement for a car in this price range. But adding airbags isn’t just a matter of bolting on. “The structure of the car has to be redesigned to properly manage the load path, ensure stiffness at the right points, and handle crash energy the way a safety car should. The result is a stiffer, stronger body with its torsional stiffness figures now in the same bracket as the Nexon, one of Tata’s best-known safety cars. The car has been designed to target a five-star Bharat NCAP rating, although the certification process is yet to be completed,” explained Mr. Kulkarni.
The suspension has also been upgraded with dual-channel strut mounts to better isolate the cabin from road noise and bumps. The car’s weight hasn’t changed, but ride quality has improved significantly – an improvement that makes the new Tiago.ev feel more premium than its price tag would suggest.
Driving smarter and smoother
The electric motor itself hasn’t changed, but the way it delivers power has been recalibrated based on real-world feedback. Throttle response becomes “more linear” and predictable, especially for city driving, making it easier to manage in stop-and-go traffic without sacrificing the brisk acceleration enjoyed by EV drivers. The software algorithms controlling the motors have also been fine-tuned based on three years of usage data, improving efficiency in the process. The result is a modest but meaningful improvement in the range of the C75 (which refers to Tata Motors’ statistical measure of the real-world driving range of its electric cars) – from 190 to 205 kilometers in the previous version, to 205 to 215 kilometers in the new version.
Fresh faces and young hearts
Visually, the new Tiago.ev has been updated with new bumpers, headlights, taillights and a redesigned bonnet. The color palette has been carefully chosen to appeal to a younger audience – lighter, more lively tones contrast with the black roof in the two-tone option. Inside, the infotainment screen and instrument cluster are new, and rear passengers now get dedicated air conditioning vents and blowers for the first time. The steering wheel has been subtly redesigned, including the repositioned logo moved to the right of the horn pad, a small detail that reflects the careful design of every surface inside the car.
Mr. Kulkarni concluded that the objective of this update is that “every car buyer, regardless of budget, deserves good technology, safety and design. Available in four variants: Smart 19, Pure+ 19, Pure+ 24 and Creative+ 24, the new Tiago.ev is Tata’s way of making this happen.”
