Geneva Motor Show Special: In Conversation with TAMO’s Pratap Bose
From an Indian perspective the highlight of this year’s Geneva Motor Show has to be the RACEMO sports car from Tata Motors’s latest sub-brand, TAMO. So we decided to shine the spotlight on the man who led the team that designed the vehicle and got chatting with him.
evo India: Can you tell us a little about how this car was born?
Pratap Bose: We had the sandwich technology as early as 2007. We developed some internal concepts and were trying to understand how to deploy this technology effectively and in a realistic way. It was a beast we didn’t really know back then. From there we moved to a stage where the design team said that here is a technology that allows us to make something that will be feasible even in low volumes since it will have a high impact. That is when we came up with the idea of doing a two-seater roadster. In May 2015 we showed a foam model of this car to the management. They were impressed enough with it to ask if there was any reason why we hadn’t made such a car. So it was decided at that meeting that in 2017 we would reveal a production version, not a concept, of the car to the world at the Geneva Motor Show.
evo: Were these made in Pune?
Pratap Bose: No, these two are the very first examples of this car and are made in Turin. But eventually, these vehicles would have to be made in India.
evo: Give us a sense of the excitement at Tata Motors about TAMO and this vehicle…
Pratap: It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity for a designer to create a brand. We haven’t just designed the product you see here. We have designed everything, from the logo to the jackets we are wearing to the clothes the models are wearing to the banners you see here. We have created everything and in doing so have created the brand.
evo: So what is the construction of the car?
Pratap: There are two thermo-formed skins that are brought together and then sealed at the edges. We then inject a special foaming materials that starts reacting, become the foam and fills up the hollows. What this does is give a light but super, super rigid component. It’s a composite but not carbon fibre. The tub is created with this material and then a front sub-frame and rear sub-frame are bolted on to this tub.
evo: What sort of reactions have you seen so far to this vehicle?
Pratap: So far, the Japanese and Koreans have been all over this, which indicates that they are seeing this as a benchmark. They have suddenly realised that a company like Tata Motors is quite capable of creating products like this.
evo: Is this sub four metres?
Pratap Bose : Yes! The RACEMO is 3850mm long while the RACEMO Plus is longer than 4000m.
evo: What part of this car is connected?
Pratap: The entire car is connected. Apart from the run of the mill, the connectivity of this car extends to the system being able to learn and predict what your next move might be.
