A country which is unstable and difficult to do business in.

What is more worrying is that this additional capacity must come from Democratic Republic of Congo. The availability of one or the other metals is likely to become a challenge to battery manufacturing and their costs will go up steeply.Cobalt mining capacity needs to double by 2025 meaning an additional ~100 Kilo Ton would need to come online compared to 2016 production. According to a McKinsey report battery demand for EVs is expected to reach 735 GwH by 20 GwH by 2030.

As per current trends the chemistry for Li+ batteries tending towards Nickel, Manganese and Cobalt.

As our Lithium ion battery manufacturing comes online worries about energy security might give way to raw material security. Plus, imposing timelines for EV adoption may not be the best way when their adoption will be constrained by prices, total cost of ownership, driving range, charging infra-structure and consumer perception - in short, the market forces. The situation of EVs running on inefficient batteries with conventional ICE auto ecosystem completely disrupted is a scary scenario. This R&D must start now through increased collaboration between auto and battery manufacturers. Specific research must go into designing batteries for India so that they don’t underperform or pose a safety hazard. The weather and humidity conditions in these countries are different from the conditions in India, where temperatures can reach 48 deg Celsius and this happened in 12 Indian cities this summer. Most of the batteries have been designed by American, Japanese, European and Chinese firms. This hasty approach can do more harm than good. But if I scratch beneath the surface, I find a lot of unanswered questions which call into doubt this approach for meeting the above very noble and laudable objectives.įirst, aren’t we being too optimistic with our timelines for EVs? We want to transition from hundred thousand two wheelers EVs to 21 million two wheelers in 5 years. EVs are being counted as the silver bullet to make up for the lost manufacturing opportunities in the past, such as semi-conductors and solar PV and catapult India into the world of hi-tech manufacturing, create jobs and address environmental, energy security and current account deficit concerns.

Rejinpaul evs important questions 2017