‘India must think like China in battery tech'

A panel discussion discusses the various challenges that India's EV sector faces including China, standardization, innovation and safety and battery swapping.

- Sricharan R

Industry stakeholders are unanimous in their view that innovation must be encouraged.

“India recently gave the PLI approval for 40 GW hours of battery capacity. It should have done it 10 years ago. Today, China has a monopoly and can choke India's EV industry. If India really wants to be a major player in the EV space, we need to think at that level. We have to change the chemistry," said RK Misra, Co-Founder, Yulu.

He was part of the panel discussing EV market dynamics on Day 2 of Autocar Professional's Two-wheeler EV Forum. Other panellists included Prabhjot Kaur, Co-Founder & CEO Esmito, Akash Gupta, Co-founder and CEO, Zypp and Ranjtha Ravi, Co-Founder, Orxa Energies.

In his view, Mishra felt that the government erred by not including low-speed electric vehicles in FAME II when it "was there in the FAMEI". He elaborated by saying "If it had been, there would not be any fly-by-night operators.

Misra said the company he co-founded gets its cells not from China, but from Japan. He reiterated that the company has ensured it makes quality products adding that most of the recent fires (involving e-two-wheelers, were all high-speed and not low-speed vehicles.

Standards are key

So will the standardization of products ensure that there are reduced mishaps? At this point, Ranjitha Ravi, Co-Founder, Orxa Energies entered the debate saying that 'standards are good and standardization is not "OEMS have a lot of advantages from an engineering standpoint and this leads to safer products, better range, more power which are good for the electric vehicle," she said. So, such an early-stage standardization might not be good for electric vehicle growth, she said.