Tata Motors, which surpassed sales of half-a-million passenger vehicles for the first time in FY2023, has bettered that with its FY2024 performance. The car and SUV manufacturer has reported total dispatches of 570,955 units in FY2024, improving upon its year-ago sales by six percent (FY2023: 538,640 units). Interestingly, Tata Motors’ FY2024 sales are just 4,045 units shy of the 575,000 PVs forecast by Autocar Professional last month.
March 2024’s 50,110 units made it the third month in a row that the company clocked sales of over 50,000 units. This demand, according to the company, is led by new launches in CNG and EVs and the continued strong customer response for the recently launched new Nexon, Harrier and Safari SUVs.
FY2024 is the third straight year that Tata Motors has hit its best-ever sales.
The company, which retails seven PVs – Altroz, Tigor, Tiago, Nexon, Punch, Harrier and the Safari – in the domestic market, has capitalised on surging demand for its SUVs, particularly the Nexon and the Punch compact SUVs. What has benefited the company’s growth over the past couple of years is that Tata Motors’ PV ‘New Forever’ portfolio covers petrol, diesel, CNG and electric powerplants, thereby considerably expanding its consumer reach compared to most of its rivals.
A key factor that acts as a catalyst to Tata Motors’ accelerated growth is its first-mover advantage in India’s fast-growing electric vehicle market, where it has an over 70% market share. The company’s EV portfolio comprises the Nexon EV, Tigor EV and Xpres-T (for fleet buyers), Tiago EV and the recently launched Punch EV. As per Vahan, of the 90,012 EVs retailed in India in FY2024 (up 90%), Tata Motors accounted for an estimated 63,545 units and maintained its lead with a 70.59% share in a dynamic market which is seeing rivals roll out new competitive products at regular intervals.
There is growing demand for CNG-powered Tata cars. Combined sales of CNG variants and EV accounted for nearly 29% or 165,576 units. Given that EVs accounted for 13% (73,833 units), it can be surmised that CNG car and SUV sales were around 91,352 units.
Commenting on the FY2024 performance, Shailesh Chandra, Managing Director, Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles Ltd. and Tata Passenger Electric Mobility, said: “In FY2024, Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles (including EVs), posted its third consecutive year of highest ever sales with wholesales and retail sales growing around 10% vs FY2023 (Vahan-based). Although, no new nameplate was launched, our unique multi-powertrain strategy enabled us to deliver healthy growth with vehicles powered by CNG and EV contributing nearly 29% of overall sales. In CNG, our portfolio of four products with innovative twin-cylinder technology, grew over 120% vs FY2023. The preference for Tata.ev products across both personal and fleet segments continued to grow and further strengthened our leadership in this segment with sales of 73,833 units and registering a strong 48% growth vs FY2023.”
Strong demand for the Tiago EV has given a fresh charge to Tata EV sales.
EV sales rise 48% to 73,833 units, EV penetration rises to 13%
Tata Motors continues to make strong gains in the EV market. In FY2024, total sales of electric cars and SUVs were 73,833 units, marginally less than the 75,000 units it had targeted but nevertheless a strong 48% YoY increase (FY2023: 50,043 units).
The FY2024 EV total is slightly higher than that in CY2023. In CY2023, Tata Motors sold 69,153 EVs, which was strong 59.15% YoY growth (CY2022: 43,451 EVs) and an increase in EV penetration level to 12.55% from 8.24% in CY2022.
Since the launch of the Tiago EV, Tata Motors says it has unlocked huge potential to increase its EV sales by adding 160 more cities in its EV sales network. Having inaugurated its two flagship EV-exclusive showrooms in Gurugram in December last year, it now plans to open 50-100 more such stores across the country in the next 12-18 months.
What’s more, with additional manufacturing capacity of 300,000 units per annum at the speedily refurbished former Ford India plant at Sanand in Gujarat, where Tata Passenger Electric Mobility began production in January, it could be surmised that the customer waiting period for new bookings won’t be a long-winded affair.