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India’s SMART City Plans Spawn Innovative Ultra Electric Bus Concept from TATA

The Ultra Electric Bus concept showcases TATA MOTORS’ design vision of a fully electric bus that is the symbol of a modern, resurgent India. Tata sees the Ultra Electric as a fundamental part of India’s future SMART city initiative. Below, we interview Tata’s global Head of Design Pratap Bose to learn more about the Ultra Electric and the way that design of public transport can really shape the future of our cities.

“We felt that the SMART city needed equally smart transport. So we conceived the bus to be a symbol of the ideal smart city,” says Bose, Head of Design at Tata Global.

“Public transport can be iconic; think of the New York cab or Routemaster bus, even Bombay’s yellow and back cabs. These designs come to symbolize the identity of their city, so the bus was designed to reflect this new idea of a connected city. Everything you see in a smart-city will reflect what the city is becoming; a powerful statement of intent in terms of design.”

Design themes

Two key themes emerged: first—the design had to reflect what the powertrain was, in this case fully electric. “We’ve done that by creating a striking graphic identity with high-impact highlights.” Second: it had to reflect an intelligent mode of transport.“ So the team drew from iconography of mobile phones, laptops, PCs by using very bold graphics and colors to make it instantly recognizable.”

Impact design

“The form of a bus is fairly limiting from a design perspective, it’s a cuboid and the packaging is the priority, and far more constrained than a car, so we felt that the face could be very strong, and the interior and the graphic identity would reinforce that boldness.”

“The big difference with a commercial vehicle is the customer—bus customers are local governments, service providers etc. so you have to take a different approach. One thing is common—the aesthetic impact; an immediate visual impact, and a lasting impact over time..that only comes when people fall in love with a product.

The Routemaster, or London cab for example, support the life of citizens in a very convincing way—they become part of the ‘urban furniture’.

We put a lot of user-centric features in this bus; the drivers cockpit has a very considered layout, far more progressive than typical Indian buses.”

“It’s wi-fi enabled, with charging points at every seat…a small but important feature; you’re waiting at the bus stop for work with a low mobile battery, you can come to rely on the bus—just small details that make the experience a more memorable one, little touches. That way it becomes part of the commuter’s life.”

Design Scale

“So the main difference from automotive design to this vehicle is scale. You obviously see it from a different perspective, your visual perception is completely different in terms of how you relate to that scale of vehicle.

Because, unlike with a car, you don’t often see the entire vehicle, we wanted to make it immediately recognizable. So the graphics and front face are key. There’s a lot of aggressive design on the streets today, and we don’t want to add to that. It can’t look too aggressive, and it obviously shouldn’t look as if it would want to run you down! Everything’s quite flush, there are no protrusions and there’s the "Trust-bar” (Tata’s brand identity feature) on the front; very simple, but a recognizable backlit symbol of the brand.“

Colour scheme

We developed a protective technical exoskeleton around the darker passenger compartment. It’s a visual sense of protection that’s reassuring.

Design detail

3D printed elements were key for exterior and interior—we have a pattern, symbolic of Indian architecture, where traditionally people employ screens to break up the light. We developed this graphic and it’s just a hint of our identity in the details. It may remind someone of a stay in a palace hotel, a trip to Rajasthan, a nod and a subtle reference of a memory. In this race to connectivity it’s very easy to lose your identity, forget where the company came from.

While the Ultra Electric remains a concept, Pratap is confident we’ll see a production version of the Ultra in the first Smart cities. "We designed the Ultra Electric as a friendly yet purposeful symbol for India’s vibrant and dynamic cities, and with this in mind the concept is key to establishing a meaningful relationship with commuters.”