Power Global, which is a US-based clean energy and mobility products start-up is in plans to invest around $25 million (around Rs 185 crore) to set up a lithium-ion battery manufacturing unit and battery swapping infrastructure in India. This setup is likely to come up over the next two to three years, according to a top company official. This will be a one gigawatt hour capacity battery plant at Greater Noida in Uttar Pradesh. Along with this, the company is also targeting to retrofit around 8 lakh existing conventional three-wheelers in India for conversion into electric vehicles.
Power Global’s India subsidiary CEO Pankaj Dubey told PTI – “We are setting up a (battery) factory now in Greater Noida. This would be a one gigawatt hour capacity plant…With this about 4 lakh batteries would be rolled out from this factory per annum. We’re expecting the mass production to begin sometime in quarter three of next calendar year. (What) we are looking at in the next two to three years is about USD 25 million initially and then when we scale up more investments will be required.”
The idea behind the venture was that of Power Global CEO and founder Porter Harris because he wanted do something about the environment and came up with the idea of making lithium ion batteries in India and do electrification of “the most polluting vehicles in the country like two-wheelers and three-wheelers which are in very large numbers”. Mr. Dubey also said there are about 55 lakh three-wheelers which are on the road today with various solutions, mostly diesel and a bit on CNG and petrol.
Mr. Dubey said – “So we plan to convert almost 15 percent of that in the next five to six years. So a conversion of about eight lakh odd vehicles is the target. They don’t have to buy a new vehicle. Their existing vehicles only will be converted to our solution and we provide them with a kit to convert, which should be done in just a few hours and then we give them our battery and we sell that as a service so they can swap anywhere.”
