tens of thousands of units? Seriously?

This is one reason Ratan Tata bought Land Rover. They really want to go electric...big time. The tiny Tata Electric Vehicle is just the beginning. Ratan Tata also owns Tata Power Co., a hydro & wind generating electric utility generating ~2500 MegaWatts of power.

litesong,

Hopefully Mr. Tata's enthusiasm for electrified transport extends to power generation. Tata Power Co. Ltd. does generate some 2300MW power - 50.4MW from one wind farm (2 more planned.) The rest is hydro, and coal. Tata plans to build out capacity to 10,131 MW by 2012 and requires 21 million tonnes of imported coal annually. About half the coal is imported from Tata partnerships in Indonesia's two largest coal mines.

While electrification of transport is a strong step toward sustainability - cleaning up coal fired power plants is an urgent next step both at home and abroad.

Agreed, gr.

Several regions enjoy hydro & increasing wind power(my NW region included). Solar cell efficiency increases with plummeting manufacturing costs will help establish solar power. Wave & tidal experiments are leading to further renewable sources.

What scares me are the gargantuan 1000+ coal-fired electric power plans presently started in China & India. Renewable electric power plans would be for naught compared to such a coal power onslaught.

Don't worry, renewables will very shortly be cheaper than coal.

"Don't worry, renewables will very shortly be cheaper than coal."

wishful thinking.

Meanwhile, what about the car company itself?

It doesn't sound much different from a handful of other little companies that currently do conversion work one car at a time. Except that they presumably plan to pour some money into doing ten at a time, and then presumably twenty, etc. Getting into quantity, but quite likely on an almost random mix of source vehicles. So no continuous run of any one model. Merely bringing lots of one-offs under one shed roof?

we will need those co2 spewing coal burning plants if we start to head into another ice age.. and apparently that is what is happening..

1- The conversion of existing vehicles into electric vehicles may have some merit, especially for a small start-up company of limited resources. The expense of developing an entire vehicle is avoided, along with a host of legal and regulatory issues.
2- However, by its' nature such conversions will represent compromised designs. It would be probably best to start with light weight economy cars (at least for the most part as such would tend to be the most satisfactory for general operation) and ultimately partner with some firm like Lotus for a design tailored to the electric drivetrain.