JLR Cars to be Assembled at Tata Motors’ Chennai Plant to Support Capacity Expansion

Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles MD and CEO Shailesh Chandra announced during the company’s Q3 2025-26 earnings call yesterday that the company would begin assembling CKD (completely knocked-down) vehicles for its Jaguar Land Rover subsidiary at its Panapakkam, Tamil Nadu plant near Chennai. This will likely be in addition to the assembly work already being carried out at its Chakan plant near Pune. While Jaguar production has wound down in preparation for the brand’s impending reinvention, Land Rover models are in demand in India. 

On the earnings call, Chandra referred to capacity constraints at Chakan and a lack of space at other plants, resulting in the need to expand to the additional facility as well as build additional capacity there. Tata Motors is also expected to need additional production resources for its own-branded passenger cars in the near future. The company will provide updates in the future about how it is balancing the manufacturing and assembly operations for its various models across its sites. 

The Panapakkam facility benefits from proximity to Tamil Nadu’s ports. Construction was commissioned in late 2024, with the intention of serving domestic as well as export demand, particularly for EVs. Tata Motors’ investment at the time was projected to amount to ₹9,000 crore, with the potential to create 5,000 jobs. The entire operation has been designed to run on 100 percent renewable energy. Annual production capacity is expected to ramp up to 2,50,000 vehicles. 

With this plant now in operation, the added capacity will bolster the company’s ability to drive JLR sales in India, which is increasingly a strategic market for Tata Motors in terms of luxury passenger vehicle demand. In early 2025, the company denied reports that it had pivoted from plans to assemble JLR vehicles there due to cost and output quality concerns. 

Top company executives also denied that there are any plans to shift from assembling CKD units to fully local manufacturing, although ongoing negotiations about free trade agreements between India and other nations or trading blocs could lead to that changing in the future.