TeaThe Geological Survey of India recently announced that they have found ‘Minerals’ or ‘Lithium inferred deposits’ containing lithium reserves in Jammu’s Reasi district. Even more impressively, the resources are estimated to be around 5.9 million tonnes, which if confirmed would give India the largest proven reserves of lithium in the world after Australia, Bolivia, Chile and China.
And you don’t really need that much lithium in a battery. If you remember the periodic table from your high-school chemistry, you might know that lithium is the lightest metal. Thus, the average ‘AA’ lithium-ion cell uses only a few grams of the element. On cars, nominally a lithium-nickel manganese cobalt (LiNMC) battery uses only 70 grams of lithium per kilowatt-hour. The increasingly more common lithium ferro-phosphate (LFP) cells use a bit more lithium than is used today, but are cheaper to produce.
So any way you look at it, the massive amount of lithium found in Jammu will power the entire Indian automotive industry as well as power the consumer electronics industry for a century. And that doesn’t eliminate the possibility of more lithium being found elsewhere in India. This will do much to allay fears that after India’s continued dependence on crude oil imports from petro-states to keep the economy running, the country will become dependent on new ‘electro-states’ such as China. Which dominates lithium refining. and battery making.
But to be clear, China will continue to dominate making batteries for electric vehicles. By ring-fencing the resources needed to make batteries, including lithium, by building a massive industry, Chinese companies have the world’s largest lithium mines located in Australia. China has managed to accelerate local demand for electric vehicles. In 2022 alone, the country is expected to sell 6.89 million ‘new energy vehicles’ (NEVs), and in the process, it has developed local champions such as BYD Corporation, a company that controls the entire value chain – refining lithium From making to making cells and then the finished product. BYD has also entered the Indian passenger car market with the Atto-3 SUV. But most importantly, BYD and CATL, another Chinese lithium-processor and battery maker, are making massive strides in developing and patenting new technologies. BYD manufactures its lithium-cells using a process called ‘Blade Technology’ and BYD Blade cells are used not only by BYD but also by Toyota and Mercedes-Benz.
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lithium rub
And therein lies the rub. India cannot simply extract lithium, it will have to work overtime to refine the deposits. And both these processes are extremely ‘dirty’. I expect there will be an environmental uproar around extraction and refining. However, this will lead to the development of key technologies and skills among Indian companies. Prior to this lithium discovery, there was a great deal of anticipation in India around a possible alternative chemistry which is sodium-ion technology. Sodium is much more readily available (in the sea) and while it has energy density issues, it would be cheaper than importing billions of dollars worth of lithium-ion batteries. Reliance Industries had also invested in a start-up in this area. But most of the successful work on sodium-ion batteries is being done by the aforementioned Chinese firm, CATL.
If extracted wisely, the deposit could be a game changer for a country poor in conventional energy resources other than coal. The automotive industry, from two-wheelers to passenger cars and commercial vehicles, is moving towards electric motion. Sure, nowhere near the numbers China is garnering, but carmakers’ stands at the Auto Expo were dominated by EVs, and India has already – in the likes of Ather Energy and Ola – developed some local champions. Has done
But India needs more such champions who develop their own technology. And while we’re doing a great job writing the software code that’s powering the worldwide electric vehicle revolution, this new discovery of lithium shouldn’t just be a ‘feel-good’ factor. This should be used to develop the entire electric vehicle and energy storage ecosystem in India. The discovery of oil in the 20th century allowed countries such as the United Arab Emirates to transform themselves into a global commercial and transport hub – a city like Dubai no longer dependent on oil. But many more countries have been cursed by unsophisticated, wasting the resources they were blessed with.
China has already fled on the lithium front, but there’s no reason why we can’t catch up and be self-sufficient if we use what we’ve discovered judiciously, which could make a difference to our future .
@kushanmitra is an automotive journalist based in New Delhi. Thoughts are personal.
(Editing by Anurag Choubey)