I recently drove the new electric offering from Tata Motors, the Curvv.ev, in Udaipur, Rajasthan. I drove down the city roads and navigated the narrow, twisty rural lanes, reaching the famed Haldighati mountain pass, a place you must have read about in your history books. Afterward, I took the highway toward Mount Abu for a short drive in the rain, before getting back to the City of Lakes, which looks resplendent in the monsoon.
Curvv.ev, the latest offering from India’s largest manufacturer of electric cars, is impressive with a whole suite of creature comforts and entertainment features. I did, however, find the car not quite meeting the promised range. You can watch my more comprehensive video review here. That said, Tata Motors does expect the Curvv.ev to halt faltering sales of electric passenger vehicles in India. According to data from the VAHAN portal of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, registrations of electric passenger vehicles in June and July 2024 were lower than those in the corresponding months last year.
Partially, this can be explained by the overall weakness in the Indian passenger vehicle market, which Shailesh Chandra, Managing Director, Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles and Tata Passenger Electric Mobility, explained to me recently. But it has more to do with the rapid growth of the industry in the past four years and not so much with the economic fundamentals that remain strong. But the fact is that an estimated Rs 70,000 crore worth of unsold stock remains in company and dealer stockyards across the country. In conversations I have had with people in the auto industry, they admitted that things are not as rosy as they were last year and the industry is moving back to an era of quicker deliveries and benefits for customers.
But then I read a story in the technology magazine WIRED that said some electric vehicles are depreciating by as much as 50 per cent in a single year in countries like the US and the UK, and this has adversely impacted the sales.
Also read: EVs were propped up as future of cars. So why are UK and US falling out of love with them?
EV vs. ICE vehicle
In vehicles that come with both petrol and electric options, the electric variant actually depreciated faster than the petrol model. Now, a cursory check through some used-car websites in India did not show conclusive evidence of dramatic depreciation, but some vehicles like the Kia EV6 GT Line from 2023 with less than 5,000 kilometers on the odometer could be bought for one-third of its on-road price. Whereas, a similarly priced petrol or diesel car would have depreciated around 15 per cent in a year.
But why is this the case? Why do electric cars fail to hold onto value unlike petrol or diesel vehicles? Personally, I believe in the main contention of the WIRED article. The rapid rate of technological innovation in the electric vehicle industry is akin to that of smartphones.
The iPhone 13 that you bought for Rs 75,000 two-and-a-half years ago is now available for less than Rs 50,000. And, if you sell it today, you would probably get not more than a third of its price.
The newer iPhone 15 has a faster processor, better camera, and there is a new iPhone 16 on the way which would be even better.
Similarly, when it comes to electric passenger cars, and even two wheelers for that matter, everything could change rapidly. The type of battery chemistry could change with change in the prices of different lithium-ion batteries. The type of motor could also change with innovation in magnets and drive technology while battery management software and vehicle software could witness dramatic changes. In fact, many electric vehicles are running on automotive-grade Snapdragon processors, which are very similar to those inside smartphones. And you know how fast smartphone processors evolve. The rate of change is so rapid that a car can become obsolete in just six months of purchase.
And that is not the case with an internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle, because here the technology is relatively stable. Yes, there are still improvements being made in ICE technology – for example the new Z-series engine in the new fourth-generation Maruti Swift is better in terms of performance and efficiency than the old K-series engine that powered the older variant of the car. But the K-series engine lasted over 15 years with minor modifications in a host of Maruti Suzuki vehicles. If you own an ICE vehicle, you would know that your car will remain more or less the same for 30-36 months after its launch, before a facelift and a new generation variant is introduced every 6-7 years. You have seen it with the Honda City, the Hyundai Creta, and the Maruti Swift.
Minor cosmetic modifications could occur here and there annually like a special edition with a new paint job or a minor feature improvement. But the ICE car lifecycle is clearly defined and consumers are well aware of it. However, it is not the same in the case of EVs because the rapid technological advancement is catching the entire value chain off guard, from the manufacturer to the consumer.
And possibly it also requires us as consumers to get used to a different mindset – that our cars are like our mobile phones that can become obsolete quickly. But this will not be easy. I don’t know how many people can possibly treat their one to two-year-old vehicle as ‘old’. But then again, we have gotten used to rapidly changing fashion and phones, so why not cars?
@kushanmitra is an automotive journalist based in New Delhi. Views are personal.
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)