Ola Electric to set up Asia’s largest BIC facility

Ola Electric is investing $500 million in setting up a state-of-the-art Battery Innovation Center (BIC) in Bengaluru.

The company said the BIC will be one of the world’s largest and most advanced cell R&D facilities with more than 165 unique and cutting-edge lab equipment to cover all aspects of cell-related research and development.

The R&D centre will recruit top global talent, including 500 PhDs and engineers, who will be supported by an additional 1,000 researchers in India and multiple other global centres. The centre will host lines that can produce all form factors cylindrical, pouch, coin, and prismatic cells.

Founder and CEO Bhavish Aggarwal said, “Electric mobility is a high growth sector which is R&D intensive. Ola's BIC in Bangalore will be the cornerstone for core cell tech development and battery innovation out of India for the world.”

BIC will house advanced labs and high-tech equipment for battery innovation and will power India’s journey towards becoming a global EV hub. Ola recently unveiled its first Li-ion cell NMC 2170. The innovation centre will have the capabilities to develop complete packages of battery pack design, fabrication and testing under one roof.

BIC will also be equipped with in-house production capability of mg to kg scale of anode and cathode material, an integrated facility for hand-in-hand nano-scale analysis and molecular dynamics simulation and an in-house crystal structure analysis to develop new battery materials.