I too was surprised by the increased range quoted for the 2021 ZS EV in India. There's very little useful information how that was achieved.
I'll take two details as given for some thought experiments:
1) India has energy efficiency standards and driving cycles, these should not have changed, and it should not matter which company does the test
2) The manager specifically pointed out that the new model has a "New High Tech High Voltage Battery"
In the absence of any additional information about the new battery in India, I've come up with 2 possible explanations how the same 44.5kWh rated capacity can give such different ranges.
First it could be the way capacity is measured.
The nominal capacity of our battery is 44.5kWh, but we can't ever fully use it. To ensure longevity of the battery they don't allow us to completely discharge it. Various sources online suggest an actual usable capacity of only 42kWh. If the new battery either allows to be completely discharged, or they chose to specify the actual usable capacity (with nominal capacity perhaps around 47kWh), that would explain about 5% difference in new range.
Also about how capacity is measured: we don't even know how it is defined in the first place. What if for old batteries the capacity was defined as how much energy needs to be delivered to the battery to charge from empty to full, while now it is defined as how much energy can be drawn from the battery to go from full to empty? Difference between the two: about 10% in losses. If that was the case, the new battery would be 10% bigger than the old one and would still only be called 44.5 kWh.
Second: if the new battery allows higher charge currents that would allow KERS to recover more energy (i.e. set KERS to 4 or 5).
With the time I wanted to spend on research I did not find the actual drive cycle used for India, but traffic density there is a lot higher than most places, so they should benefit a lot from higher energy recovery. We might get the same in city driving, but would notice hardly any difference on the highway.
Those possibilities, plus perhaps some Rupees in cash for the testers, to put them into a generous mood, could explain the difference in range. If it was mostly the first option we'd notice the same difference here, as a 23% increase in range. If it was mostly the second option (KERS), for us, using WLTP drive cycles, the difference here would be a lot less.
Just educated guesses of course. I have no information on details.
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