TI Clean Mobility Pvt Ltd (TICM), Murugappa Group’s electric vehicle arm, will be rolling out its electric three-wheeler Montra, compliant with the new battery norms, next month and will launch an electric tractor during H1 of the next fiscal.

Last September, TICM — a subsidiary of Tube Investments of India Ltd (TII) — introduced its new electric autorickshaw called “Montra” and announced that deliveries would begin the following month. However, the market launch was postponed due to several factors, including the need to ensure compliance with new battery standards which required additional work.

In September 2022, the Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways announced the implementation of additional EV battery testing standards — (AIS)-156 and AIS-038 (Rev 2) — to uphold customers’ safety on the backdrop of a spate of fire incidents involving electric vehicles.

The company also used the opportunity to do more reliability tests and also to ramp up the supplier volume and make them align with the quality and delivery standards of the company.

Now, TI Clean Mobility is gearing up for the market launch of Montra. “There is no change in configuration of Montra other than compliance to the AIS standards recommended for all OEMs,” Arun Murugappan, Chairman of TICM and TII, told businessline.

During the unveil last year, the company had announced a starting price of ₹3.02 lakh (ex-showroom post-subsidy) for Montra, which will have 3 variants – ePX, ePV, and ePV 2.0 and the battery capacity will be 7.66 kWh, 7.66 kWh, and 10 kWh, respectively. The variants would have a typical range of 118 km-155 km.

The Montra electric autorickshaw would be manufactured at the company’s Ambattur facility near Chennai.

The company will initially be selling Montra in the southern region, where it has already chosen about 40-odd distributors and has plans to increase to 75 by the end of the year.

Asked about the market launch of its electric tractor, Murugappan said the company is working on the product configurations and plan was to go to market by the first half of next fiscal.

TICM has two subsidiaries — Cellestial E-Mobility Pvt Ltd, a Hyderabad-based electric tractor start-up,  and IPL Tech Electric Pvt Ltd, a Gurugram-based electric heavy commercial vehicle. The company is also planning to launch an electric heavy truck.

fund raising plans

To drive faster growth in the EV business, TICM is raising ₹1,200 crore from Multiples, SBI, and others, while TII will be investing ₹750 crore in the EV business. Of this, ₹639 crore has already been invested. It is also planning to raise ₹1,050 crore in FY24. However, the company didn’t disclose the details of the investments to be made in the business in the near term.

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