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India's Battery Ambitions Run On Borrowed Volts (indiadispatch.com) 45

Posted by msmash from the growing-reliance dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: India is set to begin mass-producing electric-vehicle batteries within 18 months, a step hailed as a leap towards industrial self-reliance. Yet the structure of this new industry looks troublingly familiar, echoing a pattern of dependence that has long marked India's economy.

Nowhere is this dependence clearer than in the heft of intellectual property. The portfolios of India's largest battery-makers, Amara Raja and Exide, contain just seven patents combined. This pales in comparison to the industry's giants: China's CATL sits on a hoard of over 43,000 patents, while South Korea's LG Energy Solution possesses some 70,000.

Having largely missed the global lithium-ion boom, India's established lead-acid manufacturers built a business model on licensing technology rather than inventing it. This long-standing habit is now reflected in deals that create deep technological dependency. A 2022 agreement between Exide and China's SVOLT, for example, calls for SVOLT to not only transfer intellectual property but also to oversee plant construction, supply the equipment and integrate the factory into its own Chinese supply chain. Amara Raja's deal with Gotion High-Tech in June 2024 follows a similar template.

India's Battery Ambitions Run On Borrowed Volts More | Reply

India's Battery Ambitions Run On Borrowed Volts

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  • For home applications, Edison's batteries were a cheap solution.
    For industrial applications, some of these batteries were used for +60 years.
    But we all seem to like throwaway lithium batteries that fail after 700 cycles.

    • Anyway, patents only matter if you respect them. How many of those patents are even valid in India? Just because someone filed a patent in one country means nothing anywhere else. Generally, you have to pay both initial and sustaining fees in every country that you file in. Lots of countries ignore patents when it is to their advantage.
      • Oh ? They do? Like who and what?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by evanh ( 627108 )

        I've not inquired as to how it happened but India, unlike China, does in fact tow the rules that were set down by others. And has done so for a couple of decades now. It was something to do with manufacturing of generic drugs. They gave them up for I don't know what in return.

        • Maybe, if the patents were ever filed in India and if the sustaining payments were made. If not, they are free to ignore them. The number of patents is a poor measure of innovation anyway. The great majority of them are useless junk.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tsqr ( 808554 )

          India, unlike China, does in fact tow the rules that were set down by others.

          Interesting. Where do they tow them to, and what happens after they get there?

    • You can still get Nickel-iron batteries today for applications that suit them. You might find the energy density of under .1 MJ/kg to be a little bit of a downer vs. more like .3 for nickel metal hydride; or .7 for lithium chemistries.
    • In the same vein of thought, I really wonder how India got GM to lend them all those Volts.
  • I read this at first as "theft of intellectual property"

  • 70 000 patents? Really? No single entity should be allowed to hold such an amount of parent/power. Ever.

    • The application price for a patent renewal every 10 needs to be higher and scaled to software, chemical formula, drug formula, process and hardware. Dustbin technology lines needs to be free to be reborn in the hacker space free of the threat of the project being gutted by a paten claim by the dead patent collector businesses. If someone does not make or license a product for 10 years, their fee to protect the technology should be in the 10s of millions USD/Euros. Cut the number of active protections
  • The sheer magnitude of the difference in patent numbers makes me wonder about what the difference in culture or regulatory environment about patent filing are.

    Especially if you are talking companies in similar contexts, or same company today vs. 5 years ago vs. 10 years ago, or talking broad orders of magnitude, number of patents is presumably a better than useless metric; but "The two biggest companies have 7 patents" looks a lot more like someone doesn't even care to have a patent attorney throwing shi

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by coofercat ( 719737 )

      I can't speak to India, but British/European patents are difficult to get, cost a lot and take ages. American patents... they're more like shopping till receipts. Frankly any American who doesn't have a patent to their name isn't trying - you can patent literally anything, and apart from a bit of paperwork and some submission costs, you're almost certain to be granted it too. In Europe, having one - just one - is a pretty big achievement because they have to be genuinely novel and unique, and you can't pate

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        The Chinese system is more like the US one. Spam out patents, as long as they are perpetual motion machines they will probably go through, and it's mostly down to other companies to challenge them. In practice most are never enforced, or are used as ammo in a spray and pray lawsuit that gets settled out of court.

        There is also the issue of cross licencing, especially for standards essential patents. Having a massive portfolio of patents to swap means no licencing fees, even if most of them are worthless.

        • Spam out patents, as long as they are perpetual motion machines they will probably go through

          Didn't someone patent their variation of whatever the latest reactionless thruster idea is?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            Someone patented the wheel some years back. IIRC it was in Australia.

            • At least a wheel works.

              Though I'd sat patenting a scammy thing that cannot ever work is not as bad as patenting something that does work. Obviously he did it to make a point, but so many obvious things get patented.

  • After all, volts are used to describe electrical potential originating from an unbalanced distribution of charges.

  • That's the standard playbook. America, Japan, Korea and China all widely copied technologies from the previously dominant countries before they became innovative themselves. India is now doing step 1 in this process. It's not guaranteed they will get beyond the first step, but they've taken the correct first step.

    • They aren't copying, they are just there as human robots in a Chinese factory.

      Consanguinity and caste culture are not suited to modern success, of course it remains to be seen if modernity lasts much longer.

  • If we look past the maximalist approach to squeeze every last kWh/kg, sodium batteries are already there. They're even selling sodium starter batteries, going beyond their use in cars. Better low temp performance, comparable capacity, and having the stellar distinction of not being rolling bombs. Why are we still so focused on the rare earths and patents needed for lithium ion? The logic of "lithium batteries have been in development for a fraction of the time ICE have been, so give it a little more time an

    • Sodium causes more swelling in the anode materials during charging, not ideal for long life. Maybe if they manage to get metal anode batteries to work sodium will have its day.

  • So the Indian company seems to be just an outsourced manufacturing plant for the Chinese company. This could be seen as a problem of a poorer country being taken advantage of by a richer country. However, this is the same situation that China was in a few decades ago. The Chinese used the outsourcing opportunity to learn, then accumulate income, then copy, then innovate, and then finally compete. Why can't India do the same? This could be viewed as sort of a different take on the Innovator's Dilemma.

  • The Indians invented/discovered it.

    The whole of Westeen science and tech is built on it.

  • China's CATL sits on a hoard of over 43,000 patents, while South Korea's LG Energy Solution possesses some 70,000.

    Any organization bragging about holding thousands of patents is painting one hell of a target on their backs. Innovation N. Progress is being strangled to death by Greed N. Corruption due to this phenomenon worldwide. The kind of patented shitcore exclusive to patent law that allows mega-corps to literally buy and warehouse tens of thousands of examples of our most brilliant inventions and ideas, to then purposely do jack shit with them other than contribute to the death of Innovation. We hear judges spe

  • Have you seen pictures of the "power grid" in Indian cities? All of their "volts" are on borrowed time.

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