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
