President unveils India's first Lithium-Ion charger

President Ram Nath Kovind unveiled India's first, indigenous lithium-ion battery charger, developed by Ampere Vehicles here today.

The unveiling event took place on the occasion of National Technology Day.

The event was dedicated to recognise the indigenous technologies, with this year's theme being -'Commercialising Indigenous Technologies: Journey from Benchside to Business'.

Dr. Harsh Vardhan, Minister of Science and Technology, was also present during the event, amidst nearly 1000 scientists, technocrats, academicians, students and industry persons.

The lithium-Ion charger project is supported by Technology Development Board of the Ministry of Science and Technology as part of the Make-in-India initiative.

Speaking on the launch of lithium charger, Dr.Bindu Dey, Secretary, Technology Development Board, said, "Support to any development for advanced Lithium technologies for electric mobility is in line with the Government's vision to move to electric and we are happy to see Ampere's initiative in developing this indigenously are enabling customers to commute at low cost."

Hemalatha Annamalai, CEO and founder, Ampere Electric Vehicle and South Chapter Chief, SMEV, said, "Our commitment and resolve to sustainable mobility is manifested in the consistently superior products that we have launched over the time. Our new lithium-ion charger is an extension of this commitment; I congratulate the R & D team of Ampere for translating my vision into innovative products that suits to Indian conditions and can be commercialised with Indian resources."

"I am sure this will be a milestone in optimising the vehicles and battery life for consumers and achieve economies of scale for EV companies," she added.

The advanced lithium-ion chargers are designed with two-stage charging profile in which charging voltage and the current's levels can be amended based on the requirements of battery manufacturers' recommendations. The microcontroller based control and monitoring systems provides active battery reverse polarity protection, over temperature cut off and output short circuit protection.

"The advanced Ampere charger is enabled with the microcontroller based auto cut off feature, which eliminates the battery failures due to overcharging. The charger enables its operations only when the correct battery pack is connected, which eliminates the misusage of chargers with wrong battery specifications. This is the country's most technologically advanced EV chargers", said Hemalatha.

Its battery capacity rating is 48V, 20Ah/24Ah with the onetime full charging time of 4-5 hours. Weighing 1.65 kgs, the input voltage range of the charger is 185 Vac to 265 Vac and has the operating temperature zero degree to fifty degree centigrade. Also, the charger is enabled with the input and output overvoltage protection.

The event also marked the flagging off of Ampere's two lithium-ion powered scooters, V48 and Reo, manufactured indigenously. These vehicles will have lesser weight due to lithium batteries (almost 50 percent reduction), so the payload of the battery will be optimized letting the vehicles to run up to 65-70 km per charge, which just takes 3- 4 hours to get fully charged.