Is India Close To Launching Its Own Gigafactory?

The lithium miners would applaud.
From OilPrice, July 26:

India may be planning its own EV battery gigafactory, LiveMint reports, citing an unnamed government official. According to the report, the facility would cost US$4 billion to build.

“We are moving ahead with the plan and a cabinet note for the same has been floated,” the official reportedly said. “Why should India import battery storage units when we have the largest market here?"

This is not the first time media have reported on plans by New Delhi to start building its own battery manufacturing capacity. In January this year, for example, Electrek reported that a company called Magnis Energy Technologies had announced an agreement with the Indian government to build India’s first lithium-ion battery gigafactory in partnership with Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited and an affiliate of Magnis, LIBCOIN.

Later, in June, media carried a report from The Economic Times that quoted a government official as saying that the gigafactory would have a capacity of as much as 50 GW—up from an earlier plan for 40 GW—and that both local and international bidders would be invited to submit their proposals for the project....MORE

And from Bloomberg:
The Lithium Mine Buildup Is Outracing the Electric-Car Boom 

Lithium miners are bulking up for a booming future when electric cars go mainstream. But speed bumps loom, with prices tumbling on a burst of new production and demand growth slowing in China.

Between mid-2015 and mid-2018, prices for lithium, the soft, silvery-white metal crucial for rechargeable batteries, almost tripled as the world’s fleet of electric vehicles hit the 5 million mark, and the auto industry began to fret over the supply of raw materials.

That sparked the opening of six lithium mines in Australia since 2017 as companies raced to gain from an evolving technology. But while the EV boom is coming, it isn’t here yet. Sales growth is slowing in China, the top market, and the drive to fill the battery supply chain has cooled. The result: A 30% price plunge for lithium that’s spurring concern over where the bottom may lie.

“The latest EV data did reveal slowing growth, inferring that on top of excess supply, demand is now a problem,” Vivienne Lloyd and other analysts at Macquarie Capital Ltd. wrote in a report this month. “The key interest for investors should be who is likely to survive.”

On Monday, shares were largely down for lithium producers worldwide. Charlotte, North Carolina-based Albemarle Corp. fell 1% at 10:06 a.m. in New York trading, while Philadelphia-based Livent Corp. slipped 0.9%. The American depository receipts of Santiago-based Soc. Quimica y Minera de Chile SA fell 0.8%, while in Australia, Pilbara Minerals Ltd. fell 2.1% and Galaxy Resources Ltd. dropped 1.8%.

Mineral Resources Ltd. declined 2.6% after it confirmed the price for material from its Mt Marion mine will fall this quarter.

In the first quarter of 2019, sales of electric vehicles in China, the largest market for EVs, grew by about 90% compared with a year earlier. While that sounds impressive, it’s half the growth seen between 2017 and 2018, according to Nikolas Soulopoulos at BloombergNEF in London.

Meanwhile, lithium output in Australia, the world’s leading producer, is expected to rise about 23% over the next two years. And last month, the mining minister for No. 2 Chile, Baldo Prokurica, said the current administration was seeking to double that country’s production within four years....MORE

The stocks of the two largest producers:
Sociedad Quimica y Minera de Chile S.A.

FinViz 

And Albermarle:

FinViz