The Ministry of Heavy Industries recently signs a contract with Ola Electric, Reliance New Energy and Rajesh exports under the PLI-Production Linked Incentive scheme for advanced cell chemistry (ACC) battery manufacturing.
Out of the ten companies that approached the government with the offer to set up 128 Gigawatt-hours (GWh) of battery capacity under the scheme, three of them got selected for the task.
Ola Electric, Reliance New Energy and Rajesh Exports would receive incentives under the Rs 18,100 crore PLI scheme, said the government, and is expecting a battery manufacturing capacity of around 95 GWh by the selected companies.
The scheme is technology agnostic and is concerned with only the stipulated battery capacity manufactured by the participants of the scheme. As such, companies are free to choose any technology, raw materials, plant and machinery and other goods to set up their respective manufacturing facilities.
The Secretary to the Ministry of Heavy Industries Arun Goel said, “Now it’s the time for private players to take the lead and become global champions and also make the country the global hub in the energy storage segment.”
Ola Electric is setting up a battery manufacturing plant to manufacture a total cell capacity of 50 GWh. This represents more than half of the total capacity stipulated by the three companies in the PLI scheme.
Electric mobility startups such as Ola Electric, Aether Energy and Okinawa have also come under scrutiny after several incidents of their vehicles catching fire.
The issue was put down to the quality of batteries mostly imported from China. Therefore, it will be interesting to see how companies participating in the PLI scheme can make batteries more suited to the Indian use case.
Source: Inc42