In July, India’s best-selling electric scooter, Bajaj Auto’s Chetak, hit a big speed bump. A shortage of rare-earth metals had hit production plans, and the company was forced to almost halve its output.Bajaj manufactured just 10,824 units of the Chetak in July, as compared with 20,384 units during the same period last year, due to rare earth shortages.“The rare-earth magnet supply situation has been a constraint that created the risk of a sharper production dip in July,” Rakesh Sharma, executive director of Bajaj Auto, told Al Jazeera.The company has since quickly redesigned certain motors to use light rare-earth magnets and has been reworking supply chains so it can cater to its needs, Sharma said.“These changes helped us recover close to half of our planned July output for electric two-wheelers. We expect to reach around 60 percent [of output] during August and September.”The shortage that Bajaj is facing is industry-wide after China introduced restrictions on its rare earth exports on April 4, two days after United States President Donald Trump announced reciprocal tariffs on April 2. No shipment has come to India since then, putting automobile and other industries reliant on these metals in jeopardy.Vigneshwar Chittur Selvakumar, president of the Federation of Automobile Dealers Assoc …
