Concern that India is too reliant on imported lithium-ion batteries from Asia have been somewhat dulled with news two firms are set to manufacture cells in the country.
The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras-incubated Grinntech and Inverted Energy— a start up created by engineers from IIT— have announced plans to manufacture lithium-ion batteries for the domestic market.
Inverted Energy plans to begin commercial production of its range of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, solar plants and residential energy storage systems from next month.
Designed and engineered in India, the batteries will be manufactured at the company’s new facility in New Delhi.
The company will initially provide the batteries to select EV manufacturers and large solar projects.
Inverted Energy claims a microprocessor in the batteries uses algorithms to make them perform better at ‘one-fourth the weight and less than half the size of the current lead-acid batteries’ and a modular staggered cell rack arrangement improves thermal management.
The company is waiting to file multiple patents related to the design of the batteries before making them commercially available.
On 27 August, Grinntech announced it has raised $2million to push sales of its lithium-ion batteries designed specifically for the Indian electric vehicle market.
This funding marked Grinntech’s move from an IIT-Madras incubated start-up to a commercial enterprise.
The investment came from former vice-chairman of Ashok Leyland, V Sumantran and Cognizant co-founder Lakshmi Narayanan— both of whom will join the company’s board to help make the start-up a commercial enterprise.
The other two investors are UCAL Group and K S Manian, promoter of city-based Radiance Group.
It has an R&D and manufacturing facility in Chennai, and is exploring options for a larger manufacturing location to scale up production capacity.
The new facility will manufacture smart and personalised 2- and 3-wheeler battery solutions, a IOT-enabled 2-wheeler starter battery and a larger battery suited to tractors and light vehicles.
