Lohum,which is a Lithium-ion battery pack manufacturer and recycling company, plans to venture into the electric four-wheeler battery segment. For this, it plans to invest up to Rs 250 crore in the next three years to enhance its capacity.
The company, which currently has battery manufacturing capacity of 300 megawatt-hours per annum, plans to set up a new unit at Greater Noida to take its total battery manufacturing capacity to a “gigawatt-hour scale” to respond to the surge in demand from the electric vehicles segment.
Lohum Founder and CEO Rajat Verma – “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. 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. 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.”
The company has already started a pilot project for electric four-wheeler batteries.
Mr. Verma also mentioned – “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. 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.”
