Twenty-two motors, never heard of it before? Probably because they were busy developing more affordable and smarter electric vehicles tailored specifically for the young India. This Gurgaon based EV startup recently came out in limelight announcing a successful fund raise of $1.6 million in its first pre-series, a funding led by Haryana Industries CEO Ishwar Singh. The company plans to launch its first smart scooter at next Auto-Expo in February 2018.
The company was incorporated in August 2016 by Parveen Kharb, an automation engineer with an experience of 15 years in the sector and Vijay Chandrawat, an IIT Delhi graduate with 14 years of experience spanning across strategy, technology and operation domain. Taking inspiration from challenges involved and accomplishments of Tesla in USA, the duo took the decision to enter electric vehicle sector. Farhaan Shabbir, former director of Harley-Davidson was also one of the founding members and is currently a part of their 15-member team.
Talking about how the funding will be used, Vijay elaborated “The investment will be used meticulously to build and prove the product apart from strengthening the startup’s human resource capabilities. Broadly, the investment will be channeled for, testing, strengthening the team, prototype vehicle development, component development, and factory setup. The investment certifies our potential and is expected to provide exponential growth to the company.”
Twenty-two motors believe that electric vehicle technology in India is neither affordable nor progressing fast enough to catch up with the major players in the league. With a year of development and testing they claim to have successfully developed the basic tech-prototype and battery management system (BSM). As per their claims, they have tackled the key challenges in electric mobility- short life span of batteries and recharge-ability.
Their Li-ion batteries are light weight, removable and can be easily charged using any five-pinned socket eliminating the need of charging stations. If there is a power socket around (not much of a problem in urban India), you are good to go. Only time will tell if they can pull it off without compromising the power or charging time.
“The battery can be taken out of the scooter and charged anywhere. You don’t need a special plug to charge it,” said Kharb.
Moreover, the scooter will remain connected to rider via mobile app allowing remote access and control from anywhere. AI assistance, utilizing electronic sensors, will also be there to guide you through different routes depending upon elevation and co-ordinates of the road. “It will include information regarding bridges, roads and flyovers which the rider can take or must avoid depending on the battery condition and target location,” added Kharb.
The scooter will be launched in two variants with the top model ranging between Rs. 55-65k. Initially, around Rs. 50,000 scooters are going to be available in Delhi, Pune and Bengaluru region in first quarter of 2018.
Anup Singh is a professional writer with a bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering from NIT Durgapur. His love for content writing started 2 years back with writing articles and paper descriptions for college magazine. From then on, he has developed his skills as a technical content writer. He is also a passionate lyricist.