Indian conglomerate Tata Group is proposing to build a battery manufacturing plant in the country bolstering its electric vehicle closed-loop potential, the company announced on 26 January.
The company plans to invest $113 million in the 200MW plant, which will have the potential to scale up to 2GW depending on domestic and global demand, news agency Reuters has reported.
The manufacturing plant is expected to be ready within three years, the Tata’s CEO Ramakrishnan Mukundan was quoted as saying.
Tata Chemicals already owns a battery recycling center in Mumbai where it recovers cathode active materials— lithium, cobalt, nickel and manganese at 99% purity— from spent lithium-ion cells/batteries.
The recycling operations were launched at pilot scale, and have the potential to be scaled up to recycle 500 tons of spent lithium-ion batteries.
Tata Chemicals, a subsidiary of Tata Group, signed a memorandum of understanding in January 2019 with C-MET, an autonomous scientific society under the government of India, to develop collaborative technology for the recovery and purification of cathode and anode active ingredients from spent lithium-ion cells.
The company also plans to make electric cars, set up charging stations and build a battery recycling plant, senior executives said on Tuesday.
The plans were announced ahead of the launch of Tata Motors’ electric sport-utility vehicle Nexon EV— one of four electric car models it plans to launch in the next two years
Tata Power aims to add 650 charging stations, alongside the 100 already deployed, in more than 20 major Indian cities this year, the company’s CEO Praveer Sinha said.