Week 37 (Sep 6 - 12)
In this week's substack, EESL becomes the largest EV FO in India, Uber commits to 100% EVs by 2040, BluSmart fund raise, Delhi EV Policy was implemented and Mahindra takes the MESMA48 platform global.
EESL Fleet crossed 1500 vehicles. EESL, a 100% government owned joint venture between NTPC, Power Finance, REC and Powergrid, is leading the race for electric mobility in India. Till date, it has deployed a fleet of 1514 electric vehicles that includes Mahindra eVeritos, Tata Tigor EV, Tata Nexon EV and Hyundai Kona. Besides the cars, EESL has setup 600+ public and private chargers across India to accelerate the shift to electric mobility.
EESL has taken advantage of the fact that governments are transitioning their gasoline powered cars to electric and they are all being supplied by EESL. Lithium Urban Mobility comes a distant second with 1000 vehicles.
Uber Commits to 100 Percent EVs by 2040. Uber is committing to become a fully zero-emission platform by 2040, with 100% of rides taking place in zero-emission vehicles, on public transit, or with micromobility. To enable this it is committing $800M to help drivers transition to electric by 2025, launching Uber Green service that allows users to guarantee book a hybrid/EV by paying $1 extra today and tying up auto manufacturers, battery charging/ swapping players globally.
To me this sounds more PR than anything because if they are to really promote EVs shouldn’t customers who choose that option pay less rather than more?
BluSmart raises Rs 51 crore funding: In some funding new, Delhi based EV mobility startup has raised $7M from multiple investors as part of its Pre-Series A round. The fund raise comes almost 12 months after its $3M angel round back in Sep 2019 will help the company at a time when COVID-19 and continued lockdowns have led to 90% drops in the mobility business. The start-up, which currently offers its services across Delhi and Mumbai, plans to add 15000 electric vehicles and 2500 charging stations on its platform by 2021.
Okaya Power Group has formed a strategic partnership with BluSmart Electric Mobility to provide a well-laid out electric vehicle (EV) charging stations infrastructure for their fleet operations. BluSmart is exclusively taking Tata Tigor EV and recently made their foray into Mumbai.
Delhi unveiled the 2020 EV Policy: The Delhi EV policy which was first made public in 2018 and approved by the Delhi CM in 2019 has been finally been notified.
You can read more about the policy in detail here.
Mahindra electric mobility launched MESMA 48 platform for EVs globally on World EV Day. MESMA stands for ‘Mahindra Electric Scalable and Modular Architecture’ is India’s first indigienously developed electric vehicle architecture and has been used to power over 11000 EVs in India. The platform utilises cells from LG Chemicals, comes with a modular battery pack that gives a range of upto 390 Km on a single charge and can be adjusted to different lengths, widths to accommodate different kinds of vehicles.
Besides MESMA 48 which is ideally suited for hatchbacks, 3 wheelers and quadcycles; there is MESMA 350 which is used by Mahindra group subsidiaries Ssangyong/ Pininfarina for their sedans and MESMA650 platform will be used to for commercial vehicles. Mahindra Electric has discontinued the 72v eVerito platform in 2020.
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