Lithium-ion battery pack manufacturer and recycling company Lohum plans to endow up to Rs 250 crore in the next three years to improve its capacity with plans to venture into electric four-wheeler battery sector, as per a top company official.
The firm, which presently has battery manufacturing capacity of 300 megawatt-hours per annum, plans to establish a new unit at Greater Noida to take its total battery manufacturing capacity to a "gigawatt-hour scale" to counter to the surge in demand from the electric vehicles segment.
"What we had anticipated for 2022 capacity, we realised that our capacity will fall short. Immediately... we have to set up more capacity and that is what we are now in the process of doing both on the manufacturing and recycling side," Lohum Founder and CEO Rajat Verma said.
Explaining on the plans, he said, "At this stage our immediate goal is to set up a large integrated facility in the next 12 months time frame, where we can manufacture up to 1,000 batteries a day, where we can process up to 1,000 tonnes of old feedstocks a day. Approximately, to go out and set up a gigawatt-hour scale manufacturing facility and a 1,000 tonne (per day) recycling facility."
The current capacity of the firm is approximately 300 megawatt-hours per annum and in terms of
units per day it translates into about 200-250 units a day.
On the query about investments on the new project, Verma said, "In the very near term horizon, we are looking to deploy about another Rs 50 crore. In the next two to three years timeframe, we are looking to deploy an additional Rs 200 crore. All these will into enhancing capacities of battery packs for two, three and four-wheelers."
Even though the firm presently offers electric two-wheeler, three-wheeler battery packs along with batteries for storage application, he said Lohum has started a pilot project for electric four-wheeler batteries as well.
"We have started working with a couple of four-wheeler customers, who don't do traditional four-wheelers. These are slightly different four-wheeler categories. We are putting together battery packs for the four-wheeler category," he said without disclosing the partners.
Mentioning that the project is at a pilot stage at the moment, Verma added, "We anticipate to go into mass production there as we set up the factory."
Optimistic on the growth of the EV market in India, he said, "Things started looking up pretty well in the September-October timeframe and then a lot of EV models came out in the market. With petrol and diesel maintaining their high prices, the awareness around EVs has percolated at a much deeper scale than we all anticipated."
Emphasizing that in two-wheeler and three-wheeler sectors, EVs have established a company footing, he said, "In the next 3 to 5 year timeframe, I can be extremely bold and say new sales will probably be entirely driven by electric vehicles."
With many alternatives and better products coming in the two-wheeler and three-wheeler categories, the price point at operational level is much more competitive compared to the traditional vehicles market, he said adding although with finances coming in for EVs as well, the cost of attainment will also come down.
Nevertheless, for the four-wheeler sector, especially in small cars and sedans segment, Verma said it will take more time for EVs to be competitive against the conventional vehicles.
