the new indian express instead of scratching the earth for another oilfield ongc should be tasked with finding the raw materials to help meet this target about 80 percent of the worlds resources of lithium an essential element in rechargeable batteries are locked up in just nine deposits in the andes the us china and the democratic republic of congo according to a 2011 study while that suggests a tough market to break into capital and technology can open a lot of doors french oil major total is spending 11 billion buying batterymaker saft and korean steelmaker posco has even bought its way into an argentine lithium project thanks to a new extraction process its developing quite apart from health there are sound macroeconomic reasons for india to switch to electricity the countrys domestic reserves of lithium are if anything less significant than its oil endowment though its the secondbiggest producer of graphite an equally essential raw material for rechargeable batteries but an electric car uses that metal only when its manufactured whereas a conventional one drinks oil yearin yearout what sort of difference could a switch to electric vehicles make to indias import demand its not hard to come up with a rough comparison americans drive 13476 miles a year on average according to the federal highway administration at typical fuel efficiency levels of 33 miles per gallon a us car will use about 6125 gallons of gasoline over a 15year working life something like 8400 of gas at current rather subdued prices an electric minicar such as chinas mahindralookalike zotye zhidou e20 contains about 18 kilograms of lithium carbonate equivalent according to citigroup at last years lithium price of 6800 a metric ton thats about 122 spread across sales of 5 million new cars a year that difference could be hugely significant for indias commodityhungry economy oil already accounts for as much as 60 percent of the countrys trade deficit subtracting as much as 9 percent from gross domestic product according to pricewaterhousecoopers and its only going to get worse as the countrys car population grows assuming domestic generation capacity can be found to charge all those batteries india has much to gain from a switch away from gasoline its economy as well as its population would be much healthier this column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of bloomberg lp and its owners bloomberg published on jul 8 2016 at 0157 pm ist telegram facebook copy link be the first one to comment comment now comments comment now read comment 1 all comments post post find this comment offensive choose your reason below and click on the submit button this will alert our moderators to take actions reasons for reporting foul language defamatory inciting hatred against a certain community out of context spam others report join the community of 2m industry professionals subscribe to our newsletter to get latest insights analysis download etauto app get realtime updates save your favourite