Tata Group Building $1.6 Billion Battery Factory in India

India Prime Minister Narendra Modi was talking a big game about electric vehicles a few years ago, even claiming that India would be the first country to reach 100% electric vehicles. That made no sense, since it was far behind other countries in EV adoption, but it at least indicated that India wanted to grow EV adoption quickly — or perhaps the country’s politicians just wanted some good press. Since those grand statements, India hasn’t done much to actually stimulate a lot of EV adoption. Perhaps things are changing, though.

Indian manufacturing juggernaut Tata Group is now making a big move into the space, reportedly investing 130 billion rupees ($1.58 billion) into a lithium-ion battery cell factory in the country. At the moment, only 1% of Indian auto sales are EV sales, but Tata Motors is the leader in the sector. Perhaps it sees an opening now to really scale up production and sales.

That said, the battery factory is not going up overnight. Construction will begin within the next 3 years. So, again, India is not going to be ahead of the crowd on electric vehicles, let alone #1. But at least there’s serious movement!

This battery factory would initially have an annual production output of 20 gigawatt-hours (GWh), and that could later grow to twice as much, 40 GWh.

The battery factory will be located in Sanand, in northern Gujarat.