by WAF Editorial Team
•An innovative company on a mission to make EVs truly Green!
•An important step towards sustainable green mobility
•Lohum Shows and leads the Way!
Are EVs in the current day and age really green ? We are well aware of the environmental damage due to mining of battery raw materials and Battery Disposal.
Battery seems to be the New Arms Race of Mobility. The Most desirable chemical of last decade has been Cobalt. Most Lithium Ion batteries have been Cobalt based albeit new tech burgeoning.
Batteries landing up at landfill have disastrous pollution ramifications due to the phenomenon of leaching which excessively poisons the water table.
Lead Acid has been the poster boy of recycling. What About Lithium ion ?
Around 90% of a Lead Acid Battery is usually recycled owing to its established and well entrenched hyperlocal recycling eco system present in most cities.
Lithium ion is not a new battery tech. They have been around last quarter century through the mobile devices they power. But the small battery size didn’t really trigger their recycling.
Now that the batteries get bigger, latest tech and knowhow are available and the recycling can be a viable and sustainable business, there are several companies getting in this space.
And the company leading this space with their innovations is Lohum Cleantech
Founded in 2017 by Rajat Verma, Justin Lemmon, and Gazanfar Safvi, it manufactures lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery packs and recycles battery materials (cobalt, lithium, nickel, and so on).
The company claims that sales of EV batteries to solar plants and electric two and three-wheeler companies account for 80% of its revenue, with 10% coming from energy storage systems (ESS) and 10% from its recycling business.
From the fund raise Lohum had in Jan 2021, it plans to increase its manufacturing and recycling capacity for EV batteries up to 700 Mwh, from its current capacity of 300 Mwh (150 Mwh for manufacturing and 150 Mwh for recycling plant).
They have a manufacturing set up at Greater Noida, NCR Delhi Region and plans to expand operations in the US soon.
According to Lohum CEO Rajat Verma, its 150 Mwh manufacturing plant has the capacity to produce battery packs for 75K electric two-wheelers in the country.
‘Companies like Lohum are leading the way in accelerating sustainable & green electric mobility,’ says Anuj Guglani, CEO, World Auto Forum
