Hurdles facing EV project in india ( Source Chemical weekly ) Author -N.S. VENKATARAMAN
Director
Nandini Consultancy Centre
Chennai.
The promotion of EV schemes is
also facing several hurdles, which make
it doubtful as to what extent the targets
can be achieved in India.

EVs require charging at periodic
intervals and it would be counterproductive to use power produced from
emission-causing coal-based thermal
power plants for this purpose. At the
same time, renewable energy will not
be available at the required scale for
supplying power to EVs.

The most important component of
an EV is the lithium ion battery (LIB),
whose production at present in India
is at negligible levels. If just 2% of
the existing automobile units were to
be replaced by EVs by 2025-26, then
India would need LIBs of capacity of
around 27 GWH.

There is no feasibility of domestically producing LIBs to
this level by 2025-26, considering the
present pace of building capacity for
battery cells in India. Therefore, India
will become heavily import-dependent
for its requirements of LIBs, which has
to come from China

, as that country
has much larger capacity for making
these batteries as compared to any other
country.
Furthermore, for production of
LIBs, several speciality chemicals and

components are required, apart from
metals such as lithium, cobalt and
nickel. India has no deposits of the
minerals containing these metals and
only some preliminary understanding
has been reached with some producing
countries with regard to sourcing supply of nickel and lithium

In the case
of cobalt, there is a worldwide shortage, and more than 70% of the global
requirement of this metal is supplied
from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). China has already tied up a
large share of its requirement of cobalt
from the leading

cobalt mining company in the DRC. In addition, the Tibet
region in China has large deposits of
lithium, whereas India has no lithium
deposits.

Apart from metals, several speciality chemicals and components, such
as cathode actives, anode actives, electrolytes and separators are required for
LIB production. There is no or very
little production of these speciality
chemicals and components in India at
present.

If India were to produce a large
number of EVs, LIBs are required in
large numbers. No projects have been
announced for the production of speciality chemicals and components required for production of LIBs in India
so far.

With regard to EVs, is India then
building castles without fi rming up the
foundation? Is India putting the cart
before the horse