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The charging infrastructure issue is an overhyped problem
I N T E R V I E W
Mobility tech startup EVage plans to soon launch the first home-built electric vehicles with a common platform for vans, delivery vehicles, trucks and SUVs. With the help of a team of scientists and aerospace engineers, the vehicles will have an “exoskeleton structure” that will not only enable it to launch multiple car variants on a single common platform, but it will also provide lightweighting and energy efficiency, according to Inderveer Singh, Founder and CEO of Evage. Biman Mukherji spoke to him at length about the design and technology of the new vehicles as well as the emerging energy landscape to support electric vehicles in India
INDERVEER SINGH Founder and CEO, EVage
What are the biggest challenges confronting India’s EV sector in terms of energy efficiency and costs? How do you see your vehicles filling this gap? Inderveer Singh: When we talk about EV adoption in India, one
the cost of the battery becomes the most critical function in pricing of vehicles. We need to look at how to localize the supply chain. Even if you set up a battery plant, we will still need to import the expensive chemicals that go into the pricing of the cells. Currently we are with the industry as far as pricing of cells is concerned. But what we have focussed extensively on is lightweighting of vehicles. Our focus has been on lightweighting so that we can draw out more efficiency from the vehicle and more range using less battery energy. Apart from that we have worked a lot on the battery pack design and management of cells so that we can optimise the use of the pack itself. We have worked extensively on the thermal management of the pack so that cells are at an optimum temperature. Indian temperatures in daytime can go upto 50 degrees on certain days. So we have to optimise the pack so that it’s more suited to Indian conditions. What happens is when we run the vehicle continuously the temperature increases. So we optimise the energy heat loss. We monitor each and every cell on the amount of electric current it will give. We are then able to maintain energy stability in the pack. Then the packs are integrated into the vehicle structure. We have integrated them into the platform. The sum total of the structure and the battery cells work in unison. We are the first to have a vehicle of this kind in India.
Why did you feel that there was a need to make a vehicle from scratch? Aren’t there energy efficient cars available in other markets which could have been assembled here?
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