Efficiency parameters soon to aid EV battery swapping

New Delhi: The government will soon frame efficiency parameters for batteries powering electric vehicles (EVs) as it invites bids for setting up gigafactories or giant battery plants in India. A high-level panel has been set up under the Bureau of Energy Efficiency to frame performance criteria and efficiency parameters that can help battery swapping in EVs.

A senior government official told ET that there was an agreement at a NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant-led meeting last month on battery swapping option to be adopted for quicker uptake of EVs and hence the need for standardisation of advanced chemistry cells.

“A high-level panel has been set up to determine this,” said the official. “Standardisation of form factor would allow interoperability, thus catalysing the uptake of EVs.”


Battery swapping will allow consumers to replace depleted batteries with fully charged ones in just a few minutes instead of recharging, which can take several hours, But this can only happen once standards and parameters are in place and adhered to by all battery manufacturers.

According to the official, the government wants Made in India batteries to be technologically agnostic wherein the efficiency of the cell as well as life cycle is defined. While safety and mechanical parameters for lithium-ion batteries are already in place, the government now wants to define the performance parameters for batteries or advanced chemistry cells.

NITI Aayog, the government’s premier think tank, has been driving the government’s mission on transformative mobility with quicker transition to EVs with the objective of cleaning up Indian cities and ensuring India reduces its dependence on imported fuel.

The Aayog will soon invite bids for setting up gigafactories in India with cumulative battery production of 50 GWH. Typically, a gigafactory with 10 GWH capacity requires an investment of $1 billion.

Companies will be awarded the contract based on their net worth, production capacity, scale-up plan and extent of localisation. One gigawatt hour of battery capacity can power a million homes for an hour and around 30,000 electric cars.

The government has laid out a road map which envisages the share of EVs in total vehicles sold in the country after 2030 to be 30%. Conservative estimate shows that by 2030 India would need 60 GWH of battery for 10 years starting this year.

It is estimated that once battery manufacturing picks up pace in India it will be possible to bring down the cost of these batteries from $276 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) to $76 per kilowatt-hour. This is expected to bring the cost of EVs almost on a par with combustion (engine) cars in the next three-four years. Batteries account for more than half the cost of an EV.

The finance ministry has already given its go-ahead to the Aayog's Rs 700 crore per annum proposal to subsidise battery manufacturing in India starting 2022.