Energy Efficiency Services, a state-run agency set a record of largest single-order of electric vehicles in the world when it floated a tender floated for 10,000 EVs.

Tata Motors, President, Passenger Vehicle Business Unit (PVBU) Mayank Pareek at the launch of “Tigor” in New Delhi on March 29, 2017. (Photo: IANS)

Tata Motors was selected as… the winner of a global bid for the project, but subsequently Mahindra & Mahindra, too, joined after agreeing to match the price offered by the Tatas

The first batch is for 500 vehicles and when the delivery is completed the next batch of order is for 9,500 vehicles.

It will be a gigantic task and huge struggle for Tata who do not have even one E-car in production to match the order. It is also unprecedented to give order to a company that has never sold Electric vehicles before.

Mahindra had been peddling diesel cars and could hardly sell 100 E2Os per year. So Mahindra too will find the task difficult. Thus the Government has made it easy for them and broke down the number 500 to include both Ram & Shyam.. oops Tata & Mahindra… orders of 350 Evs for Tata and 150 Evs for Mahindra. Shouldn’t it have been the other way around since Mahindra has supposedly been in EV business since 20years (if one add Reva’s history)?

Dande mar ke sudhara hai dono British Raj ke leftover tate ko – Tata aur Mahindra ko. Both of these bitches never wanted to sell Electric vehicles in India. They only want to sell EVs in US or Europe. Tata had a 200km range Indica Vista EV in year 2011 but never sold it in India. Mahindra bought Chetan’s Reva in an attempt to kill it. But thankfully the World suddenly shifted away from Petrol & Diesel.

Some of Modi’s plans had misfired (demonetizing without removing big notes & making toilets in places where there is no water network available, the nearest water being 1km below the ground).

But this time he is spot on and because of that India might not miss the EV revolution. Contrary to what is taught… the Industrial revolution was transplanted from India to Britain. India barely waded through the IT revolution, benefited a lot from mobile revolution and just got on-board the 4G Internet revolution with Reliance’s Jio 4G network. Next 10 years of digital era belong to India. India without doubt will completely dominate this sphere. Most of the content for the internet will be made by Indians… from India… and in local  language.

Coming back to the story….when PM Narendra Modi visited Tesla and other American companies they did not agree to Modi’s request to make EVs in India. Now they cannot blame Indian government of completely ignoring the American companies. This turned out to be a master stroke in hindsight.

Because of Chetan Maini India had a 20 year head start on EVs and because of him India finally could take on the best in the world and out match them in price. For the first time Indian companies outbid American companies on price. We did that with rockets & space missions but those are not everyday products or missions.

Nitin Gadkari would be the man behind India’s EV success and NOT Tata or Mahindra. Because both Ram & Shyam… oops Tata & Mahindra had EVs from 2010 but they didnt know what to do with it… even now the two biggest of Indian Automobile companies cannot manufacture 500 EVs by themself!

All this time Tata & Mahindra were playing who sells EVs slower? And Tata was winning because it would not manufactur even 1 car in spite of many EV concepts. Now Mr Nitin Gadkari has called out their game and they will have to work overtime to meet the 10,000 car figure pretty soon.

Tata Motors had bid Rs 11.2 lakh per car (which is way too high for a bulk order) and is likely to sell its Tigor sedan. Meanwhile, Mahindra could offer its four-door e2o model and the Verito hatchback.

It is still unsure if these unwilling EV manufacturers will be making some EVs for the common public.