On Friday, the Tata Group announced an outline deal with the Gujarat government to invest approximately Rs 13,000 crore ($1.6 billion) in building a lithium-ion cell factory. The move is part of India's larger plan to establish its own electric vehicle (EV) supply chain.
According to insiders, the decision to construct the EV battery plant at Sanand, Gujarat, was made earlier this week at a Tata Sons board meeting. Tata Motors already operates a plant at Sanand and has acquired the adjacent Ford Motor's plant. Integration between the two plants has commenced and is expected to take about a year to complete. In a joint statement on the memorandum of understanding (MoU) between Tata's unit Agratas Energy Storage Solutions and the Gujarat government, it was stated that work on the plant should begin in under three years. The statement also mentioned that the factory would have an initial manufacturing capacity of 20 Gigawatt hours (GWh), which could be doubled in a second phase of expansion. In April, JLR announced its plan to invest nearly $19 billion over five years to transform itself into an electric-first and modern carmaker.
The statement further added, "As the state government commits to a vision to reduce carbon emissions by increasing the production of electric vehicles, reliance on lithium-ion batteries will also increase significantly as EV usage increases."