The State-owned Kerala Electrical and Allied Engineering Company is in discussions with Toshiba to manufacture fast charging lithium ion batteries for electrical vehicles. A team from Toshiba from Japan visited the Mamala unit of KEL on Tuesday.

The Japanese team was headed by Yoshiki Ishizuka, head of the battery division and Tomohiko Okada, managing director, Toshiba India Pvt. Ltd, said a press release here.

The Toshiba team had discussions with the KEL team headed by chairman Varkala B. Ravikumar and managing director Shaji Varghese on various possibilities of business association between the two companies.

Earlier, Mr. Varghese had met the Toshiba team in Thiruvanathapuram in the presence of Principal Secretary (Industries) and Principal Secretary (Transport).

“We are keen to collaborate with Toshiba to assemble Li-Ion batteries of different capacities for various types of electric vehicles, boats etc. We have shown the delegation our facility to the team and have also shown the vacant land available at the unit which is suitable for establishing an electric battery assembling unit,” said Mr. Varghese.

Toshiba officials explained the specialities of their battery technology and said that their batteries could be charged within 10 minutes, compared with four to five hours taken by conventional Li-Ion batteries.

On the conclusion of the discussions, both the teams expressed hope of joining hands for establishing a battery assembling unit at KEL.

Discussions on the further course of action and business model to be adopted will follow at the government level, the press release said.