The government is working on another Production Linked Incentive (PLI) for batteries to reduce the cost of storage and boost the adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) in India, Union Minister for Power and New & Renewable Energy R K Singh has said.

Launching an EV dashboard developed by OMI Foundation, Singh said, “The future is electric. Nobody can stop this. The price of storage will come down, and once that comes down, diesel and petrol SUVs will be history.”

The dashboard projects a 45.5% compounded annual growth rate for EVs from 2022 to 2030, with Maharashtra and Delhi taking the lead in charging station deployment.

Speaking about hurdles in adoption of EVs, Singh price is a hurdle, which in turn is because of the cost of storage. “We need to reduce price of storage. The West kept talking about importance of reducing carbon emissions, but they did not do anything about reducing storage cost. The price of storage will come down only if we add volume, and that is why we are coming out with another PLI to increase manufacturing capacity and volumes.”

The Minister pointed out that the other hurdle for EV adoption is lithium resources. He said 80% of the lithium reserves are tied up by one country, and 88% of lithium processing is located in one country.

He said shifting from lithium to other chemistries, such as sodium ion, is an imperative. “Alternative chemistries are absolutely essential for security of supply chain,” he said.

In July, the Ministry of Heavy Industries announced that it would re-issue the tender for manufacturing the unallocated 20 GWh Advanced Chemistry Cell for energy storage under the PLI program.

EV sales in India reached 371,214 units in the third quarter of 2023, a year-over-year increase of 40% compared to 264,781 units sold in the same period last year.

A parliamentary committee recently recommended extending the Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Electric and Hybrid Vehicles (FAME) Phase II until 2027 to make EVs more affordable in India. The committee pointed out that EVs remain costly and that reducing subsidies for electric two-wheelers could discourage their adoption, especially since FAME-II’s original target of supporting 1,562,090 vehicles in five years had not been met.