India’s push towards completing the transition to electric vehicles by 2030 hinges on building an ecosystem that can supply lithium-ion (li-ion) batteries. Currently, battery packs are assembled locally, though the cells are imported. To change that, the government’s focus has shifted to R&D at ISRO’s Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), which built cells for use in its space systems. The centre’s director Dr K. Sivan tells Ajay Sukumaran that the process of transferring the technology to industry for use in electric vehicles is on. Edited excerpts:

Can you take us through ISRO’s li-ion R&D?

We developed this technology for our space systems. The special advantages of li-ion batteries is in the cycle of operations—large dur­ation, high energy density and lower mass, all of which are very suitable for our applications. For space systems, we need the batteries to be robust and non-degradable, and the costs are very high. We also wanted to do it for ourselves,...