It has been widely reported how the largest automotive company in India - Tata, owner of Tata Motors Europe - is taking a long term view including leap-frogging electric technology with its Jaguar and Land Rover acquisitions.
Less well known is how number two, Mahindra Reva, formed by the acquisition of electric microcar maker Reva by Mahindra and Mahindra, is also investing heavily for the long term. After all, the parent company is already into military EVs and Reva already has modest commercial success with its ugly pure electric microcar, about 10,000 having been sold to a cult following mainly in India and the UK.
Now the excellent Battery and Energy Storage magazine BEST reports as follows from the world's largest event for on-road electric vehicles, EVS25 in China:
-Mahindra Reva has accumulated a unique experience of over 100 million kms of EV usage by having over 3500 cars on the road in 24 different countries.
-The first vehicles Reva produced receiving faint praise and amusement from the West. Now they have respect.
-Chetan Kumaar Maini gave an interesting presentation on the architecture of the next generation of car to come from the company, which would seem to be a far cry from its offerings of a decade ago.
-Over the last 4 years Reva has been engaged in the evaluation of different generations of Lithium batteries. This has lead to a large body of work in developing and managing of various types of battery chemistries. Significant work done in the last couple of years has centred around Lithium ion phosphate technologies.
Work on these batteries has also highlighted the need for a new 'intelligence architecture' for cars. Some of the requirements of this new architecture have been 'adaptability' and 'scalability' to different platforms. There has also been a need for increased level of connectivity to enable several functions and address new possibilities.
Along with batteries, significant effort at Reva has focused on this new architecture. Trials on new management systems have gone hand-in-hand with development of new batteries.
New architectures for the car have evolved and taken through several steps of bench testing, endurance trials, failure mode tests and customer usage tests.
A batch of 75 'pilot cars' with new batteries and key elements of the new architecture have been undergoing customer trials for over a year now. This has resulted in a 'whole new' architecture for the new products announced to the market.
The upshot of all this is a vehicle which will run on either lithium-ion or lead-acid batteries, be equipped for fast charging and have an on-board management system that not only monitors and balances the battery pack but provides remote diagnosis through telemetry - a car that is completely connected in more ways than one.
But when such a car might roll from Mahindra's line is not clear. Incidentally, number three in India is Tara International and it is already setting records with its electric cars. Each company has a very different approach from General motors, owners of Adam Opel and other divisions and Tesla Motors in the West, for example.
For more read http://www.idtechex.com/research/reports/electric_vehicles_in_east_asia_2011_2021_000251.asp
And attend Electric Vehicles - Land Sea Air Europe 2011
which has now been renamed from Future of Electric Vehicles to reflect its unique covering of the whole subject.
