Suzuki joint venture invests ₹3,715 Cr in battery venture 

Japan’s Suzuki Motor Corp., Toshiba Corp. and Denso Corp. will jointly invest ₹3,715 crores in the second phase of their battery venture in Gujarat’s Hansalpur. The investment is the part of the ₹5,000-crore corpus that Suzuki announced in October 2019 to build India’s first lithium-ion battery manufacturing plant for electric vehicles.

Suzuki joint venture invests ₹3,715 Cr

The joint venture is known as Automotive Electronics Power Pvt. Ltd (AEPPL) is currently working on its first phase at ₹1,214 crores, the first phase from 2018-2020 which is expected to start the production work by the year-end.

AEPPL is a partnership between Suzuki (50%), Toshiba (40%) and Denso (10%) to manufacture locally 30 million lithium-ion cells per year by 2025. The production capacity is more than 1GWh.The batteries produced by them could be deployed in all-electric vehicles, hybrids and in electric two-wheelers.

Suzuki Motorcycle India Pvt. Ltd is working on its prototype electric scooter for India and is planning to start its testing in 2020.

The trio, Suzuki, Toshiba and Denso had made their announcement about a joint venture in April 2017 to manufacture lithium-ion batteries for automotive applications.

AEPPL is said to be the leading in setting up manufacturing ecosystem for EVs in India. The other big players are also not back, the home-grown carmakers Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd (M&M), and Tata Motors Ltd also partnered with other companies to remain big players in this field. M&M partnered with Korea’s LG Chem, which develops high energy density Li-ion cells for local applications. It is setting up a plant at Chakan near Pune.

Whereas, Tata Motors tapping group companies which include, Tata Chemicals Ltd to produce its own lithium-ion technology, Tata AutoComp Systems Pvt. Ltd, Tata Power Ltd and Tata Consultancy Services Ltd are also participating in the initiative.

AEPPL has planned to add four more battery assembly lines under phase 2. The second standard operating procedure (SOP) is tentatively planned for 2021-22, the joint venture will issue SOPs for each of the four additional lines during the four-year period. The project is estimated to offer job opportunities to about 1,000 people by 2025.

However, the company will go forward with the investments for the second phase only if favourable government policies on EVs.

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