The State-run oil refiner Indian Oil Corporation Ltd will set up a 1 Giga Watt (GW) plant to make batteries for the electric vehicles in partnership with an overseas start-up using a non-lithium raw material which is available locally.
Indian Oil partners overseas startup to build 1 GW EV battery plant
The initiative by the company will help in boosting the adoption of electric vehicles. This came when the government aggressively looking for the EVs transition in the country. The battery is the main component in any EV and due to the non-availability of the local materials required in the making of the batteries, it very expensive as much as one-third of the EVs cost is of battery.
EV battery plant
Chairman Sanjiv Singh said that, as Lithium-ion battery is not only the answer but it is the best answer for EVs. But in India, we dont have a single grain of it. If EVs are in bigger way then we have to look for something which is available more enough locally. They already tied up with a company and are working to get solutions to manufacturing 100% local batteries.
As per the Indian Oil’s director for Research and Development Dr. SS V Ram Kumar, this battery plant will focus on manufacturing India-centric, raw materials easily available in India and its recycling industry is well established in this country. He said that they will use “transition group of elements”.
“Those elements are known since ages, the natural resources of that particular element in this country is abundantly available, unlike in the case of lithium. For lithium, you have to be depending on imports, and that too from China, because all lithium reserves today are under the possession of China,” Ram Kumar said.
The battery plant will be set up through a special purpose vehicle made by the IOC and overseas company.
The facility will be built in phases
The agreement had been signed and they are waiting for the government clearance. It will be a manufacturing facility of battery to the scale. This facility will be built in phases starting with 25 MW or 50 MW and ramped up.
Sanjiv Singh said that Indian Oil is venturing into energy storage and the batteries business was a “new and profitable business avenue for the company.” “We have a strategic intent to the scale-up presence in e-mobility by equipping customer touchpoints with turbo-charging and battery swapping facilities for EVs and plug-in hybrids,” he said.
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