Service Center Quotes 6 Lakh To Replace 'Failed' Tata Tigor.EV Battery: Start-Up Repairs Battery For Rs. 55,000

Electric vehicles and their popularity have been rising in the Indian market. In the last 5–6 years, manufacturers like Tata and Mahindra have come up with world-class EVs to compete with the rest. As we are all new to this technology, it is natural for customers to have concerns about these products. One of the major concerns that EV owners have is about the battery pack, as it is quite expensive to replace if it has to be done out of warranty.

However, here we have a customer who actually got the battery pack on his Tigor.ev repaired for Rs 55,000 instead of getting it replaced for Rs 6 lakh.

The image and the post have been shared by Romesh Gupta, who is the founder and MD of Yanti, an AI-powered EV Battery Intelligence & Revival firm. He shared it as a post on his LinkedIn profile. A customer had approached them with a completely immobile Tata Tigor EV sedan. The team at Yanti inspected the vehicle and found that the charging port was showing zero volts.

The initial assumption was that they might have to replace the battery. As per the post, the replacement cost of the battery was quoted by Tata Motors as Rs 6 lakh. After this, the team went to the next step and isolated the battery for safety reasons. While diagnosing, the team realised that the internal strings still showed remaining voltage and activity. This gave them hope, and they started digging in even more. They observed a severe imbalance between different groups of cells, which indicated a possible cause of failure.

After this, they did controlled charging on the batteries, and the voltage was slowly raised to 76.65V across a 21-cell string. They didn’t come across any abnormal behaviour or thermal events during this process.

The next step was to balance the voltage. They connected a 15A active balancer to correct voltage discrepancies across cell groups. The voltages on these cell groups were brought to their designated upper cut-off.

Once this was done, the battery was put aside to rest and was checked later to confirm minimal drift. The next day, they tested the capacity of the battery. They were able to achieve an 84 percent recovery on the battery pack.

The battery was then reconnected with the vehicle’s BMS and underwent real-world testing under various conditions. The post mentions that the battery cleared all performance benchmarks and is now fit for use.

The cost of battery repair is mentioned as Rs 55,000 only. This is actually a good thing for customers, as they can save lakhs by repairing instead of replacing the battery. However, there are a few things that are currently bothering us.

Yanti, as mentioned, is a start-up that is working on battery tech. How does one gain confidence to take their vehicle to a third-party workshop to fix the most important component of an EV?

Who will be responsible if the battery on an EV repaired by Yanti catches fire? The manufacturer can easily put the blame on the customer and get away without taking any responsibility.

Never take your vehicle that is under warranty to such workshops, as it would make the warranty on the battery void. Most manufacturers have now started offering lifetime warranties on batteries, and we feel that in itself is assuring enough for most customers.