Jaguar Land Rover postpones plans to build battery-electric models at an India production plant being built by parent company Tata Motors.
The $1 billion facility under construction in southern India had been earmarked for production of JLR’s BEV products, according to company sources speaking to Reuters news agency.
Sources say the British luxury brand places the scheme on hold in the face of slowing consumer demand and the company's struggles to source quality local components at the right price.
The move could also delay plans for Tata's local electric car unit, Tata Passenger Electric Mobility, to launch the first of its premium Avinya models, the sources say. This model is to be built on the same platform as JLR's electric vehicles and some components were to have been jointly sourced.
Tata’s new plant, which will assemble more than just BEV models, is designed to produce over 250,000 cars a year when it reaches full capacity within the next five years or so. JLR had expected to have the biggest share of BEV production with 70,000 models built annually.
Tata tells Reuters in a statement that the production timelines and choice of models to be built at the new factory in the state of Tamil Nadu will be aligned with Tata and JLR's broader strategy and market requirements.
One supplier source says: “For India, all the work (on JLR electric vehicles) has stopped. Everything has been suspended since about two months.”
JLR builds most of its vehicles in its plants in the U.K., Europe and China but it also assembles some cars, such as the premium Range Rover models, at Tata's plant in Pune in the western state of Maharashtra.
