Tata Motors begins Range Rover Evoque assembly at new Tamil Nadu plant

Tata Motors has officially begun operations at its new manufacturing facility at Panapakkam in Ranipet district of Tamil Nadu. The first vehicle to roll off the new production line was a Range Rover Evoque, a product of its subsidiary Jaguar Land Rover Automotive Plc. This comes after Tata Motors MD and CEO, Shailesh Chandra, recently acknowledged capacity constraints at its existing manufacturing locations.

1. Tata Motors new plant has an annual production capacity of 2,50,000 vehicles
2. Will be used for manufacturing both JLR and Tata models

The new facility was formally inaugurated by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin and Tata Sons Chairman N Chandrasekaran.

New Tata-JLR manufacturing plant details.

Tata Motors was already locally assembling the Evoque at its Pune plant, along with the Range Rover, Range Rover Sport, Discovery Sport and Velar models; Defender and Discovery are imported to India.

However, at the company’s earnings call last week, Chandra had said, “Most of our plants are kind of running out of capacity, and in a couple of years, we need a full plot at Panapakkam.”

Therefore, to rationalise production and capacity, Tata Motors has now shifted assembly of the Evoque to its new Tamil Nadu facility. This is the first phase of development of the new greenfield plant that will produce “next-generation vehicles”, including EVs, for both Tata Motors and Jaguar Land Rover. Tata’s future Avinya range of EVs could also be manufactured here.

With production set to gradually scale up over the next 5-7 years, the new Panapakkam facility will have an annual capacity of 2,50,000 vehicles. Tata Motors has committed an investment of Rs 9,000 crore for the development of this facility, and says it can help create over 5,000 direct or indirect jobs, once fully ramped up.