Exide plans li-ion based e-rickshaw

Exide Industries, India’s largest storage battery maker, which on Wednesday, forayed into fast growing e-rickshaw market rolling out its maiden model branded as ‘Exide Neo’, has already lined up plans to come up with e-rickshaw with lithium-ion batteries by the first quarter of the next year. Exide has a 75:25 joint venture with Switzerland-based Leclanché SA, one of the world’s leading energy storage solution companies, for manufacturing lithium-ion batteries from its joint venture plant in Gujarat.

As the prices of the lithium-ion battery based e-rickshaws are expected to be nearly double than that of lead acid storage batterybased, the Kolkata-headquartered company is planning to roll that out with lease schemes for owners, said Gautam Chatterjee, Exide Industries MD & CEO.

At present the e-rickshaw market is estimated to be nearly 2 million (organized and unorganized sector) and is growing at 1,00,000150,000 units/per annum. Exide expects to capture a 10 per cent market share in the initial years, which is nearly 15,000 units per year, said Arun Mittal, Director, Automotive, Exide Industries. Mahindra and TVS are the two other organized sector players in the field. Mahindra, at present sells nearly 1000 units/ month (12,000 units/year). Exide Neo, which comes with a price tag of Rs 1.2 lakh, is expected to add close to Rs 120 crore to the company’s topline initially.

“The e-rickshaw has seen phenomenal growth in the last few years and we have been an integral part of it since inception, through our offerings of robust lead acid batteries. We see a tremendous opportunity to now offer a complete, technologically advanced package," said Chatterjee.