Ratan Tata, who has given a global identity to the ‘Tata’ brand, is no longer among us, but his foresight companies and views are still part of the lives of crores of people. From international IT company like TCS to Tata Motors from truck manufacturer to a major passenger vehicle brand, Ratan was the result of Ratan Tata’s thinking. But in the midst of all this there was a dream that remained incomplete – bringing Tata Nano to the world as an electric car.
Tata Nano, who was very close to Ratan Tata’s heart, was not just an affordable car, but a revolution. He wanted to make it a symbol of future electric mobility. He often traveled in this car in his last years, while he had luxury vehicles like Jaguar and Land Rover. He named this mission to develop Nano as an electric car.
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Around 2015, Ratan Tata started work on the Nano EV project. Their goal was to introduce two variants of this car – a short battery pack for a city and a more range version to cover the second long distance. He joined hands with a startup in Coimbatore to pursue this project.
An interesting aspect of this mission of Ratan Tata is associated with Bhavish Aggarwal, the founder of Ola Electric. Bhavish shared that in 2015 Ratan Tata invested in his company. In 2017, he called Bhavish to Mumbai and then took him to Coimbatore by his personal aircraft, where Nano was being converted into EV. According to Bhavish, “Ola Electric actually started on the same day.”
