Sterling Gtake E Mobility, the electric vehicle (EV) component manufacturing subsidiary of Sterling Tools Ltd., is expanding capacity to manufacture six lakh EV components per year as compared to 4.5 lakh units, its managing director Jaideep Wadhwa said in an interview.
“We are doing about 450,000 a year. Our plan is to expand this to 600,000 a year by March this year,” he said.
“We produce over 1,500 Motor Control Units per day and sell them to a variety of customers in India. And now that this business is stabilised, we are looking at other components of the EV powertrain that we want to get into and are working on doing that,” he further said.
Stating that there are very few components that are there in an EV, he said the company having established the infrastructure and ecosystem for power electronics, is now looking at all of the power electronics that go into an EV, and is are looking at how it can enter into those segments.
“Our intention is to be a comprehensive electric powertrain component supplier,” said.
The parent company Sterling Tools Ltd. is one of the largest manufacturers of fasteners in the country. In the last over 40 years it has well established itself in the auto component space. Now that ICE vehicles would be gradually replaced by vehicles run using alternate fuel, the EV subsidy was set up to explore opportunities in the emerging EV space.
“Starting about 2018, we started looking at the future of mobility, which people define as ASIS, “Autonomous, Connected, Electric and Shared”. And, we were trying to understand what our future in this new automobile order would be,” he said.
“So we started recognising that the industry was evolving from the ICE engine and a largely mechanical architecture to an electrical and electronics architecture. The connected, electric, shared,autonomous type of environment,” he added.
Initially the company started manufacturing Motor Control Units or MCUs, which is a critical part of the EV. Now it is having double digit growth.
On the transformative move he said, “It is very interesting that a company of this lineage with more than 40 years old has been able to enter into a brand new segment and succeeded.”
“So we have shown tremendous agility and speed. We definitely have benefited from being the first mover and going forward we want to consolidate this advantage through technical competence and technical expertise,” he added.
