The Indian EV component manufacturer, Tsuyo Manufacturing, is banking on partnerships to expand its range of EV product portfolio and offer OEMs complete EV powertrain options.
Speaking to Mobility Outlook, Vijay Kumar, Director, Tsuyo Manufacturing, said that partnerships, along with good ecosystems, collaboration, and co-creations, are key for a company’s growth not just in terms of growing product portfolio but to growing the business as a whole. The company focuses on industry-academia partnerships wherein the EV motor manufacturer has partnered with institutes like IIT Delhi, NIAMT Ranchi (Formerly known as NIFFT Ranchi) and VNIT Nagpur.
Under the partnership with IIT Delhi, the company is looking at designing newer topology in electric motorswhile aiding the institute's students to understand the whole process of designing and testing EV motors. Beyond this, the partnership is also looking at newer material solutions for EV motors to build on the sustainability narrative and bring down the cost.
Kumar believes cost plays a very important role in a market like India. During its designing stage, which lasted almost five years, the company had multiple iterations through DoEof its EV motor. While almost every iteration was fulfilling the needs of Indian consumers in terms of power delivery and reliability, cost became a huddle for the company.
“We realised that while our products were more reliable than the Chinese counterparts, it was the cost that had to be brought down in order to compete with those motors,” Kumar said.
Meanwhile, with the NIAMT partnership, the company is looking at new materials for the EV motor construction and finding new composite materials for EV motor components. The VNIT Nagpur partnership aims to work on new motor technologies like Synchronous Reluctance Motor (SynRM) and Axial Flux Motors along with newer Motor Drive Control algorithms.
While these partnerships will aid the company in getting newer and more efficient technologies for EV motors, Tsuyo Manufacturing aims to provide complete powertrain solutions for its customers. This is where Ramakrishna Forging comes into play.
In December 2022, Ramakrishna Forging acquired up to 51% voting rights of Tsuyo Manufacturing. With this, Kumar believes that the company will achieve its target of becoming a complete powertrain solution provider.
With gearbox and axle manufacturing expertise, Ramakrishna Forging will aid Tsuyo Manufacturing in making the different versions of gearbox and e-axles. Under the partnership, the designing of the products will be done by the Indian EV component maker, while the production will take place at the forging company’s plant.
As of now, Tsuyo Manufacturing has two production facilities in Greater Noida. With Ramakrishna Forging on board, the company can access the latter’s manufacturing facilities in the northern or southern part of the country, depending on the discussion.
The desire is to place the third manufacturing plant closer to the current plants, but Kumar believes that setting up the facility in the southern part of the country would be more beneficial as it would be closer to the future OEM customers.
On providing complete powertrain solutions, Kumar noted that while the company has started piloting wiring harnesses with a few customers, the e-axle will be launched by next year. Meanwhile, the company is also developing an IoT-based solution for real-time testing of its products which will be rolled out to the customer by October end, he added.
With almost 47 projects going on with the customers, the Tsuyo Manufacturing founder said, “Everything in bits and pieces has started and by the end of next year, we will foresee a complete transformational change towards becoming a full powertrain solution provider.”
Besides helping Tsuyo Manufacturing to make newer components, Ramakrishna Forging is also aiding the EV component manufacturer with an already strong customer portfolio like Tata Motors, Volvo-Eicher, Daimler, Ashok Leyland, ZF,Sonalika, Escorts, and Dana.
Interestingly, Tsuyo Manufacturing has collaborated with the subsidiary of CATL, CETL (Contemporary Electric Technology Company). Kumar noted that under the partnership, while the Indian entity will aid the Chinese counterpart in developing bigger motors for CVs, CETL will help Tsuyo understand the technology. Meanwhile, the partnership will also aid in gaining a customer base for both sides, he added.
With all these developments, the Tsuyo Manufacturing founder is confident of growing the company’s revenues by about five folds in FY24. In FY23, the company saw revenue growing about three folds to $1.4 million, claimed Kumar.
“We already have the order book of that scale; the only issue was with the production capacity. Now with Ramakrishna Forging on board, this issue is solved as well,” Kumar concluded.
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