Tata unveils Nexon EV facelift

Nexon EV, the top-selling electric vehicle in India, will be launched in a new avatar on September 14. Ahead of the launch, Tata Motors unveiled the Nexon.ev facelift on Thursday night.

The facelift version comes with additional features like vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) charging, paddle shifters for regenerative braking, a 12.3-inch touchscreen infotainment system, electronic parking brake and a digital instrument cluster among others.

The EV comes with two battery pack options; the long-range 40.5 kilowatt hour battery has an ARAI certified range of 465 kilometres, 12 km more than the older version. The medium-range 30 kWh battery pack offers a range of 325 km. While the carmaker will reveal prices on the launch day next week, the older variant of the car costs ₹15-18 lakh (ex-showroom).

In Nexon.ev one can choose the levels of regen through paddle shifters, resulting in overall improvement in the efficiency and range, the company says. Regenerative braking converts the available kinetic energy during deceleration or braking of the vehicle to electrical energy which can charge the high-voltage battery of the EV.

The EV offers vehicle-to-vehicle charging, which makes Nexon.ev a power source capable of charging other EVs.

The car comes with six airbags, a 360-degree camera, hill ascent assist, hill descent control, rain-sensing wiper, and over 200 voice commands in six languages, among others.

The company offers a battery pack and motor warranty of 8 years or 1,60,000 km (whichever is earlier).

This comes days after Tata Motors' electric vehicles (EV) subsidiary Tata Passenger Electric Mobility launched its new brand identity, TATA.ev. As the EV offering grows, spurred on by surging consumer demand and a robust product lineup, customers expect a unique experience across all touchpoints, from the brand to the product and its ownership cycle, the automaker had said.

Tata Passenger Electric Mobility has a dominating market share of over 70% in the four-wheeler EV segment. In August, the company crossed the milestone of selling 1 lakh Tata EVs. "This milestone is a springboard for electrification to grow. It represents the fast-progressing ecosystem, giving confidence to customers, suppliers, charging infra players and investors to deploy new technologies and build capabilities in the industry. Such fast-paced growth will create significant employment across categories of workforce in new technologies, while improving our air quality, reducing our oil imports and making India a key hub for EV and EV component manufacturing," Shailesh Chandra, managing director, Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles Ltd. and Tata Passenger Electric Mobility, said at the time.

Tata Passenger Electric Mobility, which is backed by TPG Rise Climate, aims to invest $2 billion by 2026 to launch 10 new electric vehicles, build a dedicated BEV architecture, support local manufacture of key components and development of advanced automotive and battery technologies. It showcased future concepts at the Auto Expo 2023 – the Curvv, Harrier EV, Sierra EV and the Avinya.

Fortune India last month reported that Tata Motors is planning separate showrooms for electric vehicles in cities where EV volumes have reached a certain level.