Chennai : Tamil Nadu has got the country’s first integrated electric vehicle manufacturing facility at Ennore on Friday.

Ashok Leyland, flagship of the Hinduja Group celebrated its 70th anniversary by inaugurating its electric vehicle (EV) facility in its Ennore plant. It is India’s first integrated facility for design, prototyping, testing, process prototyping and solutions design.

The in-house facilities include engineering, prototyping and testing for Motors, Battery Modules and Packs and a Power Electronics Lab. Keeping in mind the rapidly evolving and changing market and technology, it has been conceived as an in-house start-up facility in order to stay flexible and fast.

Vinod K. Dasari, Managing Director – Ashok Leyland, said, “In our 70th year, we are laying the foundation for our future. The EV Centre in Ennore will give us the edge throughout the evolution of eMobility.”

At present the company is the only entity globally to offer different Energy Management strategies and an architecture which is modular. “Our plan is to start working on new product platforms in EVs such as eLCV, Low Floor City Buses, Last Mile Connectivity and Power Solutions products. We have also launched a host of new Business Models including eMaaS (eMobility as a Service) and eMSol (eMobility as a Solution) which ensures that we are closer to our end customers and capture more value,” Dasari said.

The Government’s eMobility vision is an opportunity for the country to save Forex and to reduce Oil dependence. “For the industry and us, it is an opportunity to reduce total costs of ownership and, more importantly, be at the very cutting edge of technology for the first time. This is truly in line with our philosophy of Aapki Jeet. Hamari Jeet,” he said.

Karthick Athmanathan – BU Head, EV’s & eMobility – Ashok Leyland, said, “Besides working on multiple technologies and platforms for our products, are creating new disruptive products and services that will change the very paradigm of Commercial Vehicle mobility. The focus is on a massive number of internal initiatives for safety, reliability and optimizing total cost of ownership.

The facility is equipped with digital tools for manufacturing and field tracking. This centre, along with the eMobTech centre, located in IITM Research Park, will be generating and implementing all the Services and Solutions contracts that are related to eMobility, for Ashok Leyland.