India’s Exponent Power brings 15-minute charging to passenger three-wheelers

India is getting an electrical three-wheeler passenger automobile that expenses from 0 to 100% in quarter-hour. The launch of the brand new EV — a collaboration between auto producer Omega Seiki Mobility and battery-tech startup Exponent Power — comes amid India’s ambition to electrify 80% of all its three-wheelers by 2030 in an effort to cut back emissions.

The brand new three-wheeler, referred to as the Stream Metropolis Qik and priced at $3,900 (324,999 Indian rupees), launched Friday and can go on sale from Might 15 in Delhi and Bengaluru. It’s a tackle the earlier Omega Stream Metropolis and carries an 8.8kWh proprietary battery pack to ship over 86 miles (126 kilometers) of vary. It’s geared up with Exponent Power’s charging tech, which the startup claims absolutely expenses a battery in quarter-hour when linked on the startup’s charging station (dubbed e^pump).

Presently, Exponent Power has 60 charging stations in six cities: Delhi-NCR, Bengaluru, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Kolkata and Hyderabad. It plans to have 100 charging stations in Delhi-NCR and Bengaluru in 2024 and 1,000 stations in complete by 2025, all of which shall be out there to drivers of the Stream Metropolis Qik, in keeping with the corporate.

The partnership signifies an growth for Exponent Power into the brand new territory, because the Bengaluru-based startup beforehand solely provided its speedy charging tech for three-wheelers to cargo and fleet operations. India’s passenger three-wheeler section is over 4x the variety of cargo three-wheelers, per authorities information. The section grew by greater than 43%, with over 45,000 three-wheeler passenger autos offered in January alone.

Three-wheeler autos are fashionable with gig employees in India who use them to move ride-hail passengers and ship packages. The Indian authorities has been incentivizing firms to spur electrical three-wheeler manufacturing and has backed their gross sales to draw clients.

The partnership between Exponent Power and Omega Seiki builds on the previous’s earlier partnerships. In 2022, Exponent labored with Reliance Industries-backed Altigreen and Indian conglomerate Murugappa Group-owned Montra Electrical to launch cargo three-wheelers geared up with its quick charging tech. The startup additionally partnered with Magenta Mobility, funded by Morgan Stanley and BP Ventures, and Fyn Mobility to supply speedy charging on their fleet. Over 1,000 autos, finishing over 100,000 charging periods, presently have Exponent Power’s tech, which the startup goals to develop to 25,000 by 2025.

“We started with cargo to prove out the tech,” Arun Vinayak, co-founder and CEO of Exponent Power, instructed TechCrunch in an interview. “As we scaled, we realized that individual drivers really love rapid charging because these guys can’t charge their vehicles at home. And they are far more hungry to do more kilometers… they need to keep running, keep going wherever the demand is and go wherever the passenger needs to go.”

Exponent Power and Omega Seiki Mobility ran shut controller pilots for the final couple of months to check client habits. They discovered three-wheelers carrying as much as three passengers typically run for as much as 22 hours a day, with two drivers utilizing them sequentially to take advantage of intra-city demand. This makes it essential for the passenger three-wheelers to entry quick charging. The opposite different to speedy charging on this case may very well be battery swapping, however that doesn’t work at scale, in keeping with Vinayak.

“Unless you rapidly charge a swap battery, you run out of batteries. And because these are swappable batteries, you are limited in the size of batteries and have a fairly limited range,” he stated.

The tech behind the three-wheeler improve

Exponent Power’s battery tech includes lithium-ion batteries together with its in-house battery administration system, which displays each cell in actual time when on charging. Moreover, the startup has its personal charging stations that use an off-board thermal administration system, which transfers refrigerated water by way of the charging plug. This helps keep the temperature of each battery cell whereas charging and makes 0-100% charging attainable in quarter-hour together with a 3,000-cycle life guarantee.

Vinayak instructed TechCrunch that Exponent Power’s charging stations provide 10x effectivity by charging 20 to 30 autos day by day, whereas different EV charging stations usually cost two autos. Equally, establishing an Exponent charging station prices practically $6,000 (500,000 Indian rupees), whereas a CNG station calls for a whole lot and hundreds of {dollars}. This has restricted the provision of CNG to round 60 stations in Bengaluru, whereas Exponent Power already has 40 charging stations within the metropolis, the manager stated.

Picture Credit: Omega Seiki Mobility

“If you give people very rapid refueling capability, very rapid recharging capability, a reliable and dense enough network, people actually stop caring about range,” he acknowledged.

The Stream Metropolis Qik shall be initially out there in Delhi and Bengaluru, with plans to enter new cities later this 12 months. Omega Seiki Mobility can be optimistic about taking its rapid-charging three-wheeler to markets past India as soon as it positive aspects sufficient traction.

“I can open up markets all across the globe. We have testing going on all across Southeast Asia, Bangladesh, Africa,” Uday Narang, founder and chairman of Omega Seiki Mobility, instructed TechCrunch.

New Delhi-based Omega Seiki Mobility has an annual capability of manufacturing 20,000 autos, with three factories in North India and one within the japanese state of Jharkhand. Exponent Power, however, has a month-to-month capability of constructing 500 charging items, which it plans to extend to three,000 by July-August.

At $3,900 (324,999 Indian rupees), the Stream Metropolis Qik is competitively priced with different electrical and gas-powered three-wheelers available on the market in India. Vinayak and Narang stated they don’t seem to be seeking to beat the competitors on the pricing however wish to assist eradicate the charging nervousness amongst three-wheeler drivers and improve their month-to-month revenue by as much as 30%.

Based in 2020, Exponent Power, which counts Eight Roads Ventures, Lightspeed Enterprise Companions and TDK Ventures amongst its key traders, has raised $44.4 million up to now. The startup generated an annual recurring income of $6 million in 2023 and goals to succeed in about $72 million by 2025. Additionally it is seeking to deploy its charging tech on electrical buses in India later this 12 months.