Tata Motors has announced a restart of operations in a graded manner for both Commercial and Passenger Vehicles from its plants located at Pantnagar (Uttarakhand) beginning last week and from Sanand (Gujarat). Tata Motors plants in Lucknow (Uttar Pradesh), Dharwad (Karnataka), Jamshedpur (Jharkhand) and Pune (only for Ambulance Vehicle manufacturing) are in final stage of readiness and expect to begin production over the next few days. This commencement of operations follows receipt of all necessary approvals from relevant Government authorities.

Dedicated ‘Restart’ teams at each location have curated detailed guidelines and conducted intensive trainings for maintaining social distancing at all workplaces, shop floors and canteen facilities. Enhanced sanitisation measures are being implemented and only limited, operationally required staff is being asked to come to work in personal vehicles or company transport.

Every employee re-joining the workplace is required to download and use the mandatory ‘Aarogya Setu’ app. Employees are also required to periodically check-in and declare the status of their own, as well as their family’s health on the Tata Motors in-house health track portal. In addition, all employees and visitors entering and exiting the plant premises are also being screened for temperature checks.

Tata Motors has used the lockdown time to design new ways of working, respecting the mandatory safety norms and aggressively adopting digital via rigorous sessions conducted virtually, employees, dealers and supplier partners were oriented to this and trained on the feature-rich BSVI offerings for effectively selling and engaging with customers.

Nearly 200 dealerships and 300 workshops for passenger vehicles and over 400 sales outlets and 885 workshops for commercial vehicles have begun operations with a new set of standard operating procedure (SOPs) defining minimal interactions and maintaining prudent social distance while engaging with customers. Over the last few days, customers have initiated new bookings, deliveries of passenger vehicles have commenced and workshops are seeing increasing inflow of vehicles for servicing.

All discussions with customers are being done virtually using digital tools and any meetings, if necessary, are being conducted with prior appointments and post verification of all requirements. Documents for vehicle insurance and registration are being collected via mail or specially installed drop boxes and vehicle deliveries are being done only after all formalities are completed. Customer vehicles arriving at workshops for repairs and servicing too are completely sanitised before being handed over post service.

Test drives are being offered on request and with prior appointment at customer’s preferred location. Only one person drives the vehicle with a dealer staff member sitting in the rear seat to avoid any physical contact. Following every test drive, the vehicle is fully sanitised including replacing protective covers shielding the interiors of the vehicle that come in contact while driving.

To enhance peace of mind for its discerning passenger vehicle customers, Tata Motors has recently launched ‘Click to drive’, an end-to-end online platform to select and buy cars. From the comfort of their homes, customers can log in, select the vehicle of their choice, avail a test drive and choose from variety of financing options to book their preferred car and SUV. This platform is integrated with all dealers who arrange for the delivery of the vehicle nationwide.

For its commercial vehicle customers, Tata Motors extended all possible technical support to keep vehicles running during the lockdown. Additionally, timelines of vehicle warranty, free services and Tata Suraksha AMC have also been extended.