EV mobility gets a charge with first indigenous charger

The President of India, Pranab Mukherjee, launched India’s most technologically advanced EV chargers, developed by the Coimbatore-based Ampere Vehicles at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi, today.

The Ampere electrical vehicle charger project has been partly funded by Technology Development Board (TDB), Ministry of Science & Technology, government of India, as a part of the Make-in-India initiative, while giving thrust to the budding EV industry.

Adequate charging infrastructure, a key step towards developing electrical vehicle and green mobility in India, gets a boost with the new chargers.

Speaking at the launch of Ampere chargers, Ms. Hemalatha Annamalai, founder and CEO, Ampere Vehicles said, “We are delighted to share Ampere’s innovation in developing EV chargers that are specially designed to endure harsh Indian weather conditions, thus making it easy to adopt for commercial use. This will go a long way in reducing the overall price of the vehicles, while boosting indigenous manufacturing in the country. Ultimately, the objective is to translate maximum value to our customers who trust our products.” The Ampere chargers will potentially enhance the life of batteries, thereby reducing the running cost of electric vehicles in the long run.

Ampere has been incubating innovations for promoting indigenous manufacturing, in sync with the government’s ‘Make-in-India’ initiative, for reducing the cost of the vehicle for its end-users. TDB identified Ampere’s excellence in R&D and partly funded the company’s EV chargers project.  TDB plays a proactive role by encouraging enterprises to take up technology oriented products. It provides equity capital or loans to industrial concerns and financial assistance to research and development institutions at simple interest rates.

Existing chargers, which are imported, are not equipped to handle Indian power and voltage fluctuations, and are expensive too. Most lead-acid batteries work in moderately cold countries. For Indian environmental conditions and battery protection, active chargers using micro-controllers with automated features were needed.

Speaking on the importance of an EV battery charger, Ms. Hemalatha said, “As the battery forms 30 to 50 percent of the total cost of an electric vehicle, utmost care needs to be taken during charging and discharging. Therefore, for a battery to remain in good condition, it is important to use it efficiently.”

An Ampere charger is unique as it uses microcontroller-based intelligent battery charger system, which facilitates automatic shut down after full charge, over temperature shutdown with auto recovery, short circuit protection with auto recovery, overload protection, etc. “On account of indigenous manufacturing, the price of an EV charger will be reduced by 15 percent as sales volume increases,” said Ms. Hemalatha.