Importance of Augmented Reality for Supply Chain Resiliency

Organizations are increasingly adopting a customer-centric approach aimed at providing faster, reliable, secure, and accurate services across their supply chains. This is where Augmented Reality (AR) has emerged as a go-to-technology for organizations to optimize their supply chains.

Augmented Reality can drive enhanced efficiency across supply chains by performing traditional tasks faster and more effectively by leveraging camera and sensor-enabled AR smart glasses and devices. This technology has the potential to address various supply chain pain points as well as streamline work processes at the individual and organization levels. Further, the physical restrictions imposed on account of Covid-19 are only going to accelerate the adoption of AR.

According to a study conducted by MarketsandMarkets, the Augmented Reality market is estimated to grow from $10.7 billion in 2019 and is projected to reach $72.7 billion by 2024 at a CAGR of 46.6% over 2019-2024. These projections further drive home the importance of AR across industries.

Let us understand how Augmented Reality can serve as an enabler for organizations to build resilient and cost-effective supply chains.

Warehouse Optimization

The biggest USP of Augmented Reality is in driving efficient warehouse management. According to a report released by DHL, warehouse activities (such as packing, storage, and put-aways) represent around 20% of all logistics costs. AR smart glasses and devices ensure a faster order picking process by enabling workers to adopt a heads-up approach while performing their tasks. Such an approach ensures that workers’ hands are free and they can stay focused on their tasks. The AR Vision picking software provides every piece of information needed by workers to carry out their jobs such as what items to pick next, how many items to pick, where to pack them in their fields of vision.

AR enables remote users to have a glimpse of what the wearer is seeing, which effectively means that OEMs, consultants, repair experts, offsite managers, etc can extend their remote helping hand to any worker. This can help keep a tight rein on unnecessary travel and downtime-related expenses.

The AR-enabled heads-up approach ensures enhanced safety – it can also play a crucial role in minimizing errors across warehouses. AR devices overlay virtual models and instructions on any user’s field of vision, which makes it possible to directly issue instructions to the task at hand and receive specific, visual feedback on how to complete the work. It is largely owing to the clarity of these instructions that workers are less prone to committing blunders.

Transport Optimization

Augmented Reality can pave the way for increased efficiency across logistics operations. AR-enabled scanners and sensors help logistics companies scan and document errors, damages, and product issues for regulations and compliance. The power of AR can be harnessed in optimizing container loading as well as it reduces the need for physical cargo lists and load instructions. It facilitates loading instructions on a heads-up display with step-by-step instructions on how to efficiently load a container.

Maintenance & Repair

Augmented Reality can be exceedingly handy in detecting machine breakdowns at warehouses. AR smart glass devices with their enhanced image recognition capabilities can identify any machine breakdowns in sorting and repackaging of goods. This technology also ensures timely maintenance of systems and is instrumental in preventing any major malfunctioning or delay in supply chains. Let’s cite an example of a forklift breakdown in a warehouse, wherein a worker can contact the concerned person over the phone, who can see the breakdown via the camera-enabled smart glasses and fix it in real-time.

Training & Learning

A key aspect of Augmented Reality technology is that it can quickly train new employees and even brush up skills of even seasoned employees to learn a new task, thus driving heightened worker productivity. AR smart glasses help workers in prompt and accurate identification of items through their various dynamic inspection functions. In case any worker is encountering any problem while performing a task, the worker can pull up information on the smart glasses to identify a solution instead of exiting the work area to find a helpful guideline, checklist, or diagram.

Aftersales Services

Augmented Reality drives higher efficiency in aftersales services. It provides a 3D imaging of the product and can map the defect – what’s more, customers can leverage the internet or database to fix the defect. This eliminates the need for organizations to have a sizeable number of skilled laborers to fix such issues as well as reduce repair costs and time for the customer as well as the company that provides repair services.

Future of Augmented Reality

The globalization of supply chain management and the inherent complexities associated with them have created a pressing need for technologies such as Augmented Reality. Organizations are starting to realize the importance of leveraging AR in supply chain management and although this technology is still in its nascent stages, there is no denying the fact that AR has a massive potential to enhance the sustainability of supply chain management.

Demand Sensing - A Game-Changer for Forecast Accuracy

In a hypercompetitive marketplace, organizations are straining every nerve to keep up with evolving customer expectations, the rapid pace of innovation, and cut-throat competition. All these prevailing market challenges drive home the importance of accurate demand forecasting for organizations to drive business growth. 

Accurate demand forecasting methods hold the key for global supply chains to be agile, resilient, and future-proof. Traditional demand forecasting methods largely bank on historical sales data and a few seasonality variables and have obvious limitations in predicting demand. These long-standing demand forecasting methods leave out volumes of structured and unstructured data that may have an impact on demand as well as fall short of factoring in constantly changing consumer preferences and external market events. Traditional demand forecasting methods are not always 100% accurate, time-consuming, resource-intensive, and can be a costly exercise. Traditional demand forecasting methods are not considered adequate enough to predict demand, especially near-term demand. Such traditional demand forecasting methods result in frequent stock-outs, overstock, blocked working capital, and more importantly, an unhappy customer experience.     

The inherent shortfalls associated with traditional forecasting methods have brought on the need for a demand forecasting solution that can better grasp ever-evolving market changes and help predict demand with a substantial degree of accuracy. And this need for a high accuracy-focused demand forecasting solution can be addressed by the next-generation automated Demand Sensing solutions that are poised to transform the demand forecasting space in years to come.

Automated Demand Sensing solutions are considered the next big thing for predicting demand. Unlike traditional forecasting methods, Demand Sensing leverages a wide range of different inputs that affect data and demand plans in the short term and breaks that demand plan into daily buckets so that forecast managers can take immediate decisions.

Demand sensing is considered a more effective approach than traditional forecasting methods because the former counts on more up-to-the-minute information for forecast accuracy. It generates demand signals by monitoring customer sentiments and their conversations that enable organizations to meet consumer demand while driving the lowest cost possible across their supply chains. This much-hyped demand forecasting solution harnesses the power of emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning and analyzes real-time consumer demand information from point of sale systems, warehouses, and shipment locations as well as factors in weather, disruptions, etc to predict demand. Demand Sensing applies complex mathematical algorithms to automatically recognize demand patterns and spot complicated relationships in large data sets. 

Demand Sensing helps organizations to substantially enhance demand forecast accuracy resulting in higher levels of customer service, provides a more responsive framework for supply chains to fulfill demand near-term with precise execution, reduces overall inventory costs, enables organizations to gain a much leaner and efficient supply chain, and augment profitability. 

The true value of Demand Sensing can be realized in a well-integrated and synchronized supply chain. This demand forecast method will serve no purpose if supply chains are unable to quickly adapt and respond to anticipated fluctuations. 

Why Businesses Need to Leverage the Power of Digital Transformation?

In a rapidly evolving business landscape, organizations are pulling out all the stops to adapt to evolving customer needs as they are run the risk of being left out by newer, more nimble competitors. The fiercely competitive marketplace makes it imperative for businesses to embrace Digital Transformation (DX) to augment their operational efficiency and profitability.

Digital Transformation has moved way beyond being just a buzzword. DX is no more a matter of choice for organizations and has become a strategic priority to cope with evolving market dynamics. The significance of DX can be underpinned by the International Data Corporation (IDC) report that stated that worldwide spending on Digital Transformation is forecasted to touch $2.3 trillion by 2023, which drives home the point that enterprises are focusing on digital transformation as a long-term investment. 

It is important to understand why Digital Transformation is imperative for organizations. DX if implemented appropriately, can provide businesses an enhanced customer experience, in terms of maintaining real-time communication with customers. Further, owing to its metrics-tracking and data analyzing capabilities, DX enables organizations to leverage data-based insights to rework their strategies and processes for delivering even better results as well as take better and faster decisions.

Digital Transformation also substantially enhances the business agility of businesses and positions them in the highest state of readiness to continuously improve and innovate its processes and operations. Data security is often considered a pain point for businesses, but a committed DX strategy can help businesses address such data security concerns. Digital Transformation can be handy in empowering the workforce and helps businesses drive productivity improvements among its employees. DX also eases collaboration challenges of enterprises (who work closely with various industry stakeholders) by facilitating a transparent workflow that enables them to achieve operational efficiency.

Although enterprises are aware of the importance of Digital Transformation initiatives, its implementation has not been on expected lines. According to a study conducted by Everest Group, 73 percent of organizations failed to deliver any business value from their DX efforts. This is largely owing to lack of strategic planning among businesses, resistance to change, absence of a customer-centric approach, reckless technology adoption, and focusing on agility without understanding it or being adequately prepared for the same.

So then, what do businesses need to come up with to ensure a successful Digital Transformation implementation? Firstly, organizations need to showcase an unflinching commitment towards ensuring a successful DX journey. It is generally observed that organizations achieve a fair amount of success in its phase I of DX implementation but somehow are not able to retain that focus in phase II to lack of adequate push from the top management. At times, enterprises find competing priorities a big roadblock in the smooth DX implementation. Businesses will stand to gain if they accord high priority to their DX initiatives through its entire phase. Further, organizations will be better off if they break the entire Digital Transformation initiative into small projects and goals that can deliver measurable goals aligned with their vision and strategic intent. Organizations need to focus on how their operations need to change to deliver improved experiences to customers as well as employees while focusing on implementing technologies. 

There is no denying the fact that organizations cannot expect to survive without unlocking the power of Digital Transformation. DX has and will continue to remain an integral part of the day-to-day operations of organizations. 

Cloud Solutions Emerging as More Preferred Option over On-Premise Systems for Organizations

Organizations are increasingly looking at ways to stay ahead of the competition and see leveraging technology as one prime focus area as they strive to drive their business performance to the next level. Typically, for organizations embarking on business expansion, often grapple with roadblocks such as small team size, the unpredictability of demand, limited resources, etc. And to address these challenges, cloud computing solutions are considered the most preferred route for organizations in pursuit of business excellence.  Let us try and understand all the buzz surrounding cloud computing and why companies are so excited about shifting to a cloud computing model from an on-premise model. Cloud-based services offer on-demand computing services over the Internet on a pay-as-you-go basis, which effectively means that organizations instead of having to manage their files and services in a local storage device, would be doing the same over the Internet in a cost-efficient manner.

An on-premise model has far too many limitations, in terms of scalability. Companies end up shelling out a lot for an on-premise setup and are also bogged down by lesser options. Further, organizations find it exceedingly challenging to scale down when a need arises in an on-premises model and are hit hard by lack of flexibility. This also has the potential to trigger heavy losses, in terms of infrastructure and maintenance costs. Cloud-based solutions enable organizations to avail the pay-per-use model, wherein they only pay for whatever service they leverage – not just that, cloud solutions provide easier and faster provisions for scaling up and scaling down. There are many other factors why an on-premise model is witnessing a steady decline. On-premise systems require a lot of space for storing servers not to speak of power and maintenance issues that go with it. Cloud computing solutions are offered cloud service providers who take the responsibility of managing and maintaining servers, thus driving significant savings, in terms of space and money for organizations. Dealing with the frequency of scheduling software releases can be a big task in an on-premise setup, but a cloud environment facilitates automatic software updates. 

Data security is a big focus area for organizations, and this is where on-premise setups are losing out to cloud-based solutions. On-premise systems have lesser data security owing to the complicated combination of physical and traditional IT security measures. Cloud solutions offer better security as well as eliminate the need for constantly monitoring and managing security protocols. In scenarios of data loss, cloud computing has robust data recovery measures in place and can offer faster and easier data recovery unlike on-premise setups, where the data recovery chances are far lesser. In addition, data cannot be accessed remotely in an on-premise setup, while data can be accessed and shared anywhere over the Internet in a cloud environment. On the maintenance front, an on-premise system requires dedicated teams for hardware and software maintenance, thus loading up the cost of organizations substantially. Cloud solutions, on the other hand, are maintained by cloud service providers and thus saves your maintenance and resource allocation costs by a considerable degree.

Cloud-based solutions have three deployment models – Public Cloud, Private Cloud, and Hybrid Cloud.  Public Cloud offers a cloud infrastructure to the public over the Internet and this infrastructure is owned by cloud service providers. Private Cloud refers to the cloud infrastructure being exclusively operated by an organization and it can be managed by an organization or a third party. A hybrid cloud is a combination of the functionalities of public and private clouds.

Cloud computing essentially offers three service models – Infrastructure-as-a-service (IAAS), Platform-as-a-service (PAAS), and Software-as-a-service (SAAS). IAAS is a cloud service model where users can access basic computing infrastructure – it is commonly used by IT administrators. IAAS will be the go-to-service model for any organization requiring resources such as storage or virtual machines. Under the IAAS service model, the onus is on organizations to manage the application, data, runtime, malware, and o/s, whereas components such as virtualization, server, storage, and networking are handled by cloud service providers. 

Another cloud service model is Platform-as-a-service (PAAS) that provides cloud platforms in runtime environments for developing, testing, and managing applications. This service model enables users to deploy applications without the need to acquire, manage, and maintain related architecture. The PAAS service model will be the go-to-service model for any organization that needs a platform to create a software application. Under the PAAS model, you are required to handle the data and applications while cloud service providers handle the other components such as runtime, malware, o/s, virtualization, server, storage, and networking. 

The third and most popular cloud service model is Software-as-a-service (SAAS) that offers cloud services for hosting and managing software applications. SAAS addresses all software and hardware requirements and saves you the hassle of owning IT equipment. Unlike the IAAS and PAAS services models, the SAAS service model handles all the components of the solution – data, applications, runtime, malware, o/s, virtualization, server, storage, and networking.

Clearly, the popularity of cloud-based solutions among organizations is immense and only indicates its significance in driving digital transformation among businesses. In fact, a recent study revealed that the global cloud computing market size is expected to grow from $371.4 billion in 2020 to $832.1 billion by 2025, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 17.5% during the forecast period. These projections sum up of the massive potential of cloud solutions going forward. 

How Organisations Can Leverage IAM Solutions to Steer Clear of Security Breaches

Organisations are increasingly grappling with challenges of ensuring their data and resources are secure and not exposed to security breaches such as identify theft, identity spoofing, etc through internal as well as external sources by grant of unmonitored access to applications and devices their users need. 

Organisations are realising how a security breach of sensitive business data can have a massive negative impact and this precisely explains why organisations across the globe are substantially investing on resources to secure their company data. Broadly-speaking, companies face challenges of securing their company data against employee actions, securing company data against malware and finally the cost of implementing and maintaining robust secure measures. These security breach challenges have necessitated the need for providing organisations a safe and secure place to store identifiable information and ensure their assets are secure. And this is where digital identity and access management (IAM) comes in handy as it serves as a single pane of glass and helps easily mitigate security breach challenges.

It may be pointed out that in any typical IT architecture there are multiple identity data stores, multiple administrative points, multiple data synchronisations and replications, which result in data redundancies and where users have to get individually authenticated on all applications every time they access.   

A close look at an IAM-enabled environment brings to the fore the fact that IAM has the capabilities to reduce multiple data identify stores to a single and centralised identify data source centre, which further eliminates the need for multiple data synchronisations and replications. Further, IAM also serves as a single administration point and more importantly offers a single sign-on (SSO) option to multiple applications 

Identity and Access Management (IAM) is often misunderstood as having the same features as Privileged & Access Management (PAM). Both IAM and PAM are different. IAM takes care of business’ everyday users or customers, controlling the access and experience that those users are granted within an application, while PAM protects users with privileged access to sensitive data.  There is little doubt that security threats are a big concern across organisations. A study conducted by Cybersecurity Insiders in 2018 revealed that 90 % of organisations feel exposed to internal attacks. What is more alarming is that another survey also indicated that 75 % of security incidents result from internal risks.

IAM Capabilities

• IAM offers complete identify lifecycle management like user creation, credential management, entitlement, provisioning management, compliance, auditing and reporting under one umbrella

• IAM facilitates access management – it ensures authentication, authorisation, single sign-on (SSO), password management are properly segregated as processes

• IAM enables role management wherein roles are created, fine-grained and managed

• IAM helps security leaders to define performance metrics as well as implement periodic or real-time automated audit to meet compliance guidelines

• IAM is of huge help in the area of distributed workforce, where providing remote access to corporate resources could lead to secutiy threats, if not handled well. A comprehensive and centrally managed IAM solution ensures high visibility and control needed for the distributed workforce to an enterprise IT administration team

• IAM can help administrators consolidate, simplify and control access privileges where critical applications are hosted in traditional data centres, private clouds, public clouds, etc

• IAM can consolidate and centralised corporate directories as well as streamline the synchronising process

• IAM enables dispensing with the manual provisioning and de-provisioning as it can fully automate the provisioning and de-provisioning process, thus providing IT full power over access rights of employees, partners, contractors, vendors and guests

IAM Benefits

• IAM helps organisations grow their business by adopting a holistic IAM strategy, wherein customers are managing their own identities and authorisation and organisations always have accurate and up-to-date customer info

• IAM can pave the way for an outstanding customer experience – a key element for achieving online service success – IAM can help improve customer experience, which in turn, improves loyalty and ensures repeat business and builds a positive business reputation

• IAM enables organisations to enhance their business agility. IAM with its single sign-on (SSO) provision and centralised authorisation management can always ensure secure access to systems without creating additional security siloes

• IAM can go a long way in trimming an organisation’s customer service-related costs. IAM enables customers to manage their own identities and authorisations, which eliminates the need to call customer support teams for activities such as customer registration, creating new identities, authorising and de-authorising employees, activating OTP services, resetting passwords, etc

• IAM also addressed the security breached caused by people inside organisations – IAM can limit damage caused by such insiders by ensuring these users only have access to system they work on and they cannot escalate privileges without supervision 

• IAM plays its part in connecting people with application and devices - a key requirement for digital transformation but in doing so can trigger security threats. IAM can manage the complexities associated with connecting with people with various applications and devices by enforcing stringent security policies with strong authorisations.   

It’s only fair to assume that Identity and Access Management (IAM) will have a critical role to play in organisations staying security breach-free. IAM will pave the way for organisations to not just enhance operational efficiency, but also augment their business growth.  

Supply Chain Digitization No More An Option for Businesses

Supply chains serve as the backbone of the economy and play a pivotal role in the success and failure of any organization. The global supply grid is highly interconnected and any kind of disruption at one touchpoint has the potential to derail the entire supply chain and its operations.

Global supply chains have always been grappling with various challenges and have remained vulnerable to disruptions, demand-supply imbalances, and ever-evolving customer expectations. The scourge of Covid-19 has brutally exposed this fragility and left enterprises with no option but to step into overdrive mode, and introspect their existing supply chain models.

Clearly, there is a pressing need for enterprises to build an agile, robust and resilient supply chain. A resilient supply chain will enable enterprises to weather the prevailing market challenges and thrive in the future. This brings into focus the strong need for enterprises to ride the digital transformation wave in their pursuit of staying relevant and competitive. 

According to a study conducted by Gartner, only 21% of global CXOs believe that they have a resilient supply chain while 55% are still in the planning phase of building supply chain resiliency.

Enterprises need to accord high priority to risk management - they must focus on identifying risks and threats in their existing systems and put in place risk management tools and frameworks to avert any untoward situation. Further, organizations will be better served with developing a risk-awareness culture as well as a prompt and effective contingency plans. 

Enterprises would also do well to assess the risk profile of their suppliers and should chalk out adequate contingency plans for its high-risk suppliers. After all, a smart supplier management process shall stand businesses in good stead for the future.

Leveraging digital technologies is no more business differentiator but a business imperative for businesses to foster their future growth. Organizations can bank on advanced data analytics as the latter can provide real-time visibility into your supply chain activities. Enterprises by leveraging data analytics can anticipate future demand and can scale up or scale down their production accordingly.

Organizations can use IoT to avail real-time shipment tracking and storage condition monitoring that improves the forecast accuracy of shipment delivery, resulting in increased customer satisfaction, better warehouse planning and risk mitigation.

Blockchain can also help business add value to their supply chains, in terms of driving real-time load traceability, smart contracts, fraud detection, etc that can drive more trust, transparency and efficiency in the overall supply chain. Businesses can count on robotics and automation tools which can help streamline and accelerate tasks and processes that were once performed manually. This can significantly reduce worker fatigue, increasing efficiency and driving economic benefits.

There is an increasing focus among solution providers to build a reliable data pipeline for analysis instead of just focusing on new data gathering. These solution providers leverage analytical and statistical models to derive business insights and generate measurable benefits.

Businesses can make their supply chains more resilient by applying technology accelerators such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data, Artificial Intelligence & Advanced Analytics, Robotic Process Automation, Distributed Ledgers, and Augmented & Virtual Reality. All these technology accelerators help organizations in attaining better demand forecasting, inventory management, capacity planning, and dispatch optimization.

Businesses are having to cope with ever-evolving customer expectations, the rapid pace of innovation, and cut-throat competition in pursuit of shaping up a resilient supply chain.

Clearly, supply chains have moved away from the long-held perception of being a back-office support function. It is no more about delivering a wow product or service but more about delivering a great customer experience that is more personalized and engaging.

Digitizing supply chains is no more an option for organizations. It is a must-have for organizations to stay relevant and competitive in a fiercely competitive marketplace.

Potential of Different Battery Chemistries for Electric Vehicles

 The battery technology for electric vehicles (EVs) has substantially evolved over the decades and this evolution has been largely driven by a certain degree of deficiency in one battery technology that subsequently incentivised the development and deployment of newer battery chemistries aimed at overcoming those deficiencies. Typically, the strength of such batteries is measured on parametres such as energy density, faster charging, a large number of duty cycles and wide operating temperature range. Further, the operating environment can largely dictate which battery chemistry will gain prominence in a certain region or country.

Lead acid was the first battery technology to be deployed in battery electric vehicles (BEVs) in the early nineties – a technology that has been consistently worked on for several years. These batteries lost out on popularity owing to deficiencies such as lower energy density and lower life. “Lead acid batteries witnessed a decline in adoption in EVs as it had issues such as low energy density to the tune of 30-50 Wh/kg coupled with a lower life cycle (in terms of charge and discharge cycles) on account of erosion of plate materials in an acidic electrolyte during change discharge cycles. Further, the higher charging time of 8-16 hours also limited their usage in EVs. More importantly, the lead acid technology has been in the market for a long time and there is limited scope for further optimisation as several threshold values have more or less been achieved,” explained Ashim Sharma, Partner & Group Head, Nomura Research Institute.

Around the nineties the nickel metal hydride (NiMH) battery technology also marked its arrival in the automotive space, but it was more widely deployed in hybrid vehicles. Typically, one of the critical battery requirements in a hybrid vehicle is longevity due to multiple change and discharge cycles during the course of operation, and this explains why NiMH batteries are deployed in hybrid vehicles. NiMH batteries did not quite gain market acceptance among battery electric vehicles because they have limited discharge current (0.2C-0.5C), limited lifecycle and generate heat during fast charging and discharging. These factors limited the performance of EVs, in terms of acceleration performance and fast charging capabilities that are considered crucial for battery electric vehicles.

Toyota has been at the forefront of deploying nickel metal hydride (NiMH) batteries in its hybrid vehicles in various models such as Prius and Camry Hybrid, etc. Vikram Gulati, Country Head & Senior Vice President, External Affairs, Public Relations, Corporate Social Responsibility & Corporate Governance, Toyota Kirloskar Motor, shared his perspective on NiMH batteries. “NiMH batteries have higher energy density and offers higher charge/discharge cycles resulting in high durability. Such batteries have no toxic content and can be efficiently recycled. Such batteries and lithium-based batteries have different advantages and are used based on criterion such as thermal management, energy density and specific application requirements,” said Gulati.

Over a period of time lead acid and NiMH battery technologies have had certain deficiencies that necessitated the need for a new EV battery technology. And such a scenario heralded the arrival of lithium-based batteries in the automotive space in the late nineties. Among lithium-based batteries lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide (NMC) and lithium iron phosphate (LFP) have emerged as prominent lithium battery chemistries for EVs. The prominence of these battery chemistries can be attributed to their substantial production scale-up over other chemistries over the past decade. “NMC and LFP have gained market acceptance because their prices also dropped drastically, which triggered customer demand. These chemistries score high on the reliability front owing to its extensive use. NMC and LFP will remain fundamental battery families for EVs as their cells have witnessed significant cost reduction,” explained Nakul Kukar, Co-Founder & CEO, Cell Propulsion.

NMC is considered a good option for long-range EVs, especially passenger cars, sedans and SUVs. “You need to pack in more energy in each cell of your EV battery pack to effectively manage the battery pack size while delivering long vehicle range. NMC makes more sense for long-range EVs because you can pack in more energy in the same dimensions and same weight constraints,” Nakul pointed out.

NMC is also considered a good option for the Indian two-wheeler segment that grapples with space constraints to install the battery pack. NMC can pack in more energy using a lesser number of cells, thus resulting in small compact batteries that can fit easily in two-wheelers.

It is also observed that NMC works well in countries that have colder climates, but can have issues if used in hot weather conditions. This battery chemistry brings in much more complexity in hot weather conditions and can be a riskier option and will need a complex and extensive cooling system and the range benefit is not worth the effort, especially in the Indian context, noted Nakul.

Among other lithium-based battery chemistries, lithium iron phosphate (LFP) is touted as a good solution for the Indian three-wheeler segment, wherein cost is the most important consideration than volume or even performance. LFP works well for three-wheelers in India as it is cost-effective and more reasonably priced than other chemistries although it cannot provide a longer range. Further, if three-wheelers desire long range capability they can explore NMC but it will only augment the cost and therefore it won’t make any sense for three-wheelers.

LFP can work well with long-haul buses as the latter have adequate volume and mass margin for heavier battery packs and are built with lower energy density cells that can offer required range. “LFP is a desired solution for buses due to its inherent safety and lower cost even though its energy density is lower since there is enough volume in such vehicles and they can easily carry extra mass – even if you add one ton of extra weight, still the bus body and structure will be able to handle it”, opined Nakul.

It is pertinent to note that buses typically pack in far more number of cells than any other vehicle, which necessitates the need for a reliable thermal cooling system to protect the battery cells or else the probability of something going wrong in the battery could be many times more. It is largely owing to inherent safety attributes LFP has emerged as an attractive option for buses as compared to using a large number of NMC cells for bus battery packs. Like long-haul buses, LFP can be deployed for heavy duty trucks up to 40 tonne GVW. 

Besides NMC and LFP, another lithium-based battery technology that is witnessing steady adoption is lithium titanate oxide (LTO). The biggest advantage of this battery technology is the very high cycle life of 10,000 plus cycles as well as extremely high temperature operating range. LTO is also not prone to thermal runaway and can support fast charging in high ambient temperatures. Besides this, LTO offers high discharge rates, which makes it ideal for high power applications. These characteristics make the battery ideal for applications such as hybrid vehicles (including PHEV), forklifts, tractors, mining and defense vehicles. However, the price of these batteries is on the higher side and the energy density is a bit lower. Efforts are being undertaken to improve the energy density and with scale prices of LTO should also come down.

According to Sharma, LTO can be good to use for intra-city cabs because it enables one to do fast charging and travel from point A to point B with lesser travel time. However, packing in a small battery means the battery range will not be very high but the charging time of 10-12 minutes is equivalent to a CNG refilling time, he observed.

Lithium nickel cobalt aluminum oxide (NCA) is another battery chemistry used in EVs but hasn’t gained much prominence. NCA shares similarities with NMC, in terms of offering high specific energy, good specific power and a long life span, but is costlier and is also regarded as a less-safer version of NMC.

At large, lithium-based batteries have several attributes that have enabled them to be a market mainstay but there is no denying the fact that there is a question mark over its long-term sustainability as some of the materials (lithium and cobalt) used for making such batteries are not widely available and are only confined to a few nations globally. There is a considerable amount of work happening to develop newer, viable battery technologies for EVs. One technology that appears promising and is tipped to be closer to commercialisation is solid-state batteries. This technology offers safety features more than what LFP can provide as well as provide energy density close to what NMC provides and also requires a lesser number of steps in production. “Solid state batteries are the best alternative to lithium batteries and should be commercially available over the next four-five years. In this Indian context, this technology can provide good range in hot conditions,” explained Nakul.

The sodium-ion battery technology is another technology that is considered a viable alternative to lithium-based batteries. This technology is similar to a lithium-ion battery, wherein only lithium compounds are replaced by sodium compounds. It may be noted that the development of sodium-ion batteries happened concurrently with lithium-ion batteries in the seventies but research on sodium-ion peaked from 2011. “The biggest plus point about this technology is that sodium is abundantly available across the globe unlike scarcely available lithium or cobalt and it can also be extracted from sea water, which thereby ensures adequate supply for all countries with a coastline, remarked Sharma.

Sodium-ion batteries offer several advantages such as low switching cost for manufacturers due to similarities in manufacturing processes/protocols between them and lithium-based batteries. This technology offers a lower pack cost due to use of cheaper materials (for example, aluminium is used in current collectors as opposed to copper being used in lithium-based batteries). The sodium-ion technology has the ability to ensure fast charging by leveraging a right combination of hard carbon anode and corresponding cathode to eliminate sodium plating as well as ensure easier transportation and storage as compared to lithium-based batteries, noted the senior Nomura Research Institute official. However, there are some challenges that have to be addressed before sodium-ion batteries can be ready for commercialisation – these challenges include development of an effective electrode & electrolyte material and improving the lifecycle, explained Sharma.

It is pretty clear that lithium-based battery chemistries will continue to hold relevance over the next decade or so. But there are reservations over long-term sustainability of lithium-based batteries owing to limited availability of lithium and cobalt as well as its vulnerability to warmer weather conditions. Various technologies such as aluminium air, zinc air, etc are in development stage, but only two technologies – solid state and sodium-ion battery technologies – appear closer to commercialisation. Of course, in an ever-evolving battery technology space, newer possibilities can never be ruled out.