Currently, EV cells are all imported and go into making of the electric scooters, cars, buses and commercial transport vehicles
The atmosphere was one of bonhomie at Log9 Materials’s campus in Bengaluru, one hot day in April. In fact, only the previous week, the Met department had recorded 36.5°C at the international airport in India’s tech capital, making this one of the hottest Aprils since we started keeping records.No one seemed to mind the heat, sitting outdoors and semi-outdoors around a makeshift stage, on which Rajan Anandan, managing director at Sequoia Capital, invited an expert, Michale Liedtke, chief commercial officer at Zeta Energy Corporation, to explain the real event, which was being beamed on a large screen behind him.That event was the rolling out of India’s first privately manufactured lithium-ion cell, happening inside, in a controlled-environment facility. Along with the founders of Log9, two stalwarts of India’s tech leadership, K VijayRaghavan, former principal scientific advisor to the Government of India, and K Sivan, former chairman of Isro, were gathered around a machine that completed the final steps to roll out India’s first privately made commercial lithium-ion cell.Outside, on the tables for the journalists and guests, alongside bottled water, there were mockups of the cells. They showed that Log9 was making two versions of the cells. Currently, EV cells are all imported and go into making the batteries for India’s growing number of electric scooters, cars, buses and commercial transport vehicles.Later, the Davids, nay, the nano-Davids dreaming of India holding its own against the Goliath of cell manufacturing, China, Akshay Singhal, Kartik Hajela and Panjak Sharma, took turns to explain how their cells—one rated 3.2V 50Ah and the other 2.3V 50Ah—were better than what’s available in the market today.One is a lithium ferro phosphate cell and the other is a lithium titanium oxide cell. The cells are also being turned out to “tropical” conditions, according to Log9, whose marketers have also coined the term TiB, for “tropicalised ion battery.”The cells were 14 percent and 33 percent more “energy dense” respectively, Hajela explained. Meaning, basically, they pack more energy per unit amount of whatever’s inside the cylindrical cells.