India To Self-Produce Lithium-Ion Battery By Joint Venture

Until now, India still isn’t able to produce its own Lithium-ion batteries yet and has to import all of them for the electric vehicles in the market. However, this is going to change soon as Union Cabinet Minister for Heavy Industries and Public Sector Enterprises Anant Gangaram Geete revealed:

A Lithium-ion manufacturing factory

He also reported that India’s largest power generation equipment manufacturer BHEL was having a talk with a US-based company about a joint venture for domestic manufacturing of lithium-ion batteries.

BHEL, which is short for Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited, is hoping this forthcoming manufacturing would severely cut down the country dependence on China for importing these batteries.

In the earlier December, the Heavy Industries Ministry has proposed to Department of Revenue suggestion to reduce customs duty on parts of electric vehicles (EV). However, final decisions haven’t been made yet. At the moment, zero customs duty is applied to important parts like the converter, energy monitor, charger, battery, controller, electric motor and compressor. Whereas, parts like plastics and metals are charged 28 percent basic customs duty.

Lithium-ion batteries are used for electric vehicles

Recently, the Power Ministry issued guidelines to make it easier to set up a new public charging station (PCS). The guidelines suggest that people who look to set up a PCS should be provided with connectivity on priority by the place’s licensee and that they would obtain electricity via open access from any power generation company. Some technical requirements for a standard PCS are also noted in the guidelines.