Week 10 (Mar 1 - 7)
In this week's substack - Okinawa makes EV charging practical, Bounce fundraise, Karnataka legalizes e-bike taxis, IOC-Phinergy to start Al-ion battery production, Auto cos reach out to govt for help.
Okinawa looks to make EV charging practical for Indians. Founded in 2015 by Jeetender Sharma, Okinawa is an electric two-wheeler manufacturer based in Gurgaon. Okinawa currently has seven electric scooters in its portfolio including the Raise, Ridge, Praise, i-Praise, Praise Pro, Lite, and Ridge Plus that are manufactured in its facility based out of Rajasthan. With a focus on battery swapping and charging the replaceable battery packs at any electrical plug, Okinawa Autotech is looking to launch more variants soon.
Karnataka likely to legalize electric bike taxis. In a big shot to the arm of 2-wheeler aggregators such as Bounce, Rapido and Ola, the State government announced the “Electric Bike Taxi” project in its FY21 budget. Despite being legalized and approved by the Central Government, the Karnataka government has delayed introducing regulations to allow use of two-wheelers as taxis. By leap frogging petrol-based bikes, the government intends to popularize electric bikes to ease last mile mobility.
However despite having an EV policy in place since 2017, the uptick from EVs has yet to be seen. It seems likely aggregators such as Ola, Uber, Rapido and Bounce may have to invest to create a fleet which can then be used as taxis.
Bounce raises funds for EV integration, expansion. After raising $105M in January, Bounce has raised $6.5M in debt from Innoven Capital to fuel a deeper electric vehicle (EV) integration, multi-city expansion, and help accelerate profitability. Bounce is India’s first dockless scooter sharing service, with a mission to facilitate easier access to mobility. Founded by Vivekananda, Anil, and Varun, the company was started in 2014 as WickedRide, in the luxury bike rental segment and in 2018 pivoted to solving first and last-mile connectivity under the name Bounce. It began its operations in Bangalore with 100 dockless scooters and today has a presence in over 35 cities with a fleet of over 19,000 dockless scooters and clocking over 1.1 lakh rides daily. Last year the company had claimed 1000 EV scooters on its platform and had carved a new entity to deploy battery swapping stations at Kirana stores as a pilot.
Delhi directs New EV Charging Stations to take safety precautions The Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC) has asked to take safety measures to new EV charging stations. The DERC has observed charging stations were being installed in the basements of commercial complexes close to a large number of batteries stored for battery swapping purposes. To avoid any fire accidents DERC has instructed DISCOMs to take all necessary safety measures to avoid any fire accidents for these installations.
IOC-Phinergy to begin metal-air battery field trials; in talks with auto companies Indian Oil Corporation, which recently raised a minority stake in Israel based startup Phinergy, is in talks with leading Indian automobile makers to start field trials for the metal-air batteries that it intends to produce in a joint venture with Phinergy. Metal-air batteries, when combined with Lithium-ion batteries, can provide electric vehicles with a range of up to 600 km—paving the way for large-scale adoption of electric cars. The JV will set up a factory in India to manufacture aluminum-air batteries for EVs and stationary applications and facilitate the development of Al-Air technology.
Auto cos reach out to Govt for airlifting auto parts from China to ease shortages. As per a report in Mint/Reuters, The Union government is exploring the possibility of airlifting automotive parts from China to ease a shortage caused by the closure of factories there due to the Covid-19 epidemic. The fledgling Indian EV industry has been hit too - they may be forced to halt production in April/May due to a shortage of parts from China, which tends to be the leading supplier for a number of important elements of EVs including Lithium ion cells.
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