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Tata Group, the parent company of Tata Motors, has pledged an investment of ₹4,000 crore to build a lithium-ion battery plant in Gujarat -- in the Dholera Special Investment Region (DSIR), to be precise. In fact, an ET report states the group has already secured a 126 acre parcel of land in the area.

Jaiprakash Shivhare, managing director, Dholera Industrial City Development Limited (DICDL), said, "Tata Group has already made an announcement to set up a lithium-ion battery manufacturing unit. They have procured land of 126 acres and in the first phase, the company will make an investment of ₹1,000 crore." He went on to add that the Indian government is working on incentives and other policy measures aimed at encouraging local production of batteries for electric vehicles. As a matter of fact, the government will also introduce incentives for capacities up to 50GW, which will deliver an additional push for investments in the market.

While we are yet to hear straight from the horse's mouth, it goes without saying that the battery plant will provide the much-needed thrust to India's EV components manufacturing industry, in line with the government's vision, as was also observed in the budget 2019 announcements.

Let's quickly go over the key announcements made in budget 2019 for electric vehicles.

1. The GST levied on electric vehicles has been reduced from 12 per cent to five per cent. This will help bring down the cost of buying an electric vehicle in the country so as to present them as a viable option to choose over internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles.

2. Income tax deduction of up to ₹1.5 lakh on the interest paid for EV loans. Overall, the government will offer benefits worth ₹2.5 lakh on the purchase of EVs.

3. The government also announced that certain EV components, including lithium-ion cells, will be exempted from customs duty.

4. Budget 2019 also brought along with it tax breaks for domestic manufacturers of spare parts for electric vehicles.

These measures, though impressive, aren't nearly enough for a country that aims to have 30 per cent EVs in the country by 2030. We will definitely need more policies and incentives conducive to the purchase of electric vehicles as well as manufacturing them and their components in the country. To that end, we can only hope that the pace and intent demonstrated by the government in the recent past only grows further.