Tata Passenger Electric Mobility (TPEM) and Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the licensing of JLR’s Electrified Modular Architecture (EMA) for the development of Tata’s electric vehicle series, Avinya. The Tata Avinya was shown in 2022 as an EV concept. However, this announcement confirms that Avinya will not be a standalone product but an architecture that will spawn a family of electric vehicles. TPEM has licensed the EMA’s use for a royalty fee, which also includes electrical architecture, electric drive unit, battery pack and manufacturing know-how.
The reasons behind this move are quite obvious. Using JLR’s EMA will help Tata accelerate its entry into the premium EV segment while significantly reducing development time and costs. It will also help TPEM’s adoption of advanced technologies that are compatible with the EMA, such as Level-2 autonomous driving. Further, this MoU is also expected to create over 200 new jobs in the UK.
In 2021, JLR announced that the next-generation Evoque and Discovery Sport would be based on their all-new EMA. At the time, the new Evoque was slated for a 2024 debut, to be followed by the third-generation Discovery Sport. But as per the latest announcement, the new Evoque’s launch might not happen before 2025. The EMA is a native EV platform that can either house a small-to-mid-capacity battery with a range-extending internal combustion engine (ICE) or a high-capacity battery for purely electric propulsion. It is being designed with a primary focus on accommodating advanced driver assistance systems and cloud connectivity features.
Sharing his thoughts on the announcement, Anand Kulkarni, Chief Product Officer at TPEM, said, “Avinya stands for ‘Innovation’ and represents our vision for a new paradigm in personal mobility. Being built on an architecture that is equipped with the latest advances in new-age technology, software, and artificial intelligence, Avinya will spawn a new breed of world-class EVs with global standards in efficiency and range. We are delighted to collaborate on the EMA platform with JLR to actualise this vision.”
This is not the first time Tata has collaborated with JLR for platform sharing. The current Harrier and Safari models are based on Land Rover’s D8 steel platform (which it inherited from Ford).