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把柴油车变成电动汽车!这家由埃隆·马斯克(Elon Musk)前助手领导的公司想要这么做
如果你能把现有的汽车改装成电动汽车，为什么还要买电动汽车呢?这就是全球能源公司希望在未来6-7年内，用柴油或压缩天然气(CNG)驱动的约90万辆三轮车的目标。下一阶段，该公司计划对两轮汽油车也采取同样的做法。
去年疫情期间，领英让哈里斯和杜贝走到了一起，几条信息和长时间的视频聊天导致了一家公司的诞生——Power Global。奇怪的是，杜贝和哈里斯甚至没有私下见过面。
“这其实很有趣。我们甚至一次都没见过面。”“当我们开始交流时，一开始我们甚至没有谈论业务。那是很久以后的事了。在某种程度上，你只会看到他们是谁，即使是在屏幕上，这对我来说是非常明显的。”
该公司的目标是加快印度的出口电迁移两轮和三轮车的故事不仅包括从装配线上下线的汽车或未来将上路的汽车，还包括数百万辆已经上路的汽车～
该公司的目标是加快印度两轮和三轮电动汽车的发展，不仅要覆盖装配线上下线的汽车或未来将上路的汽车，还要覆盖数百万辆已经上路的汽车。它想对现有的车辆进行改造——用电动马达和电池取代发动机和排气系统，这使得Power Global与过去几年出现的几十家初创公司不同。
“世界各地对环境的关注都非常高，尤其是在印度，世界上污染最严重的20个城市中有14个在印度。特别是随着新技术的出现电动汽车在印度，高质量的产品在印度生产是很有意义的。”“但在路上行驶的电动汽车数量很少，所以我碰巧与波特取得了联系，并提出了一个战略，在改造套件中生产高质量、高效和安全的锂离子电池，以改造现有车辆。”
“根据我们的经验，这种转换可以在短短几个小时内完成。人们已经在区域中心尝试过，但改造不是一件可以在小范围内完成的事情。如果你真的想在全国范围内大规模生产，就必须获得ARAI等组织的批准，而且要做到这一点，你必须表现得像一个原始设备制造商，”Dubey补充道。“我们是第一家以这种规模进行尝试的公司。因为目前还没有有组织的玩家尝试过，所以我们在这里有很多机会。”
作为世界上最大的三轮车市场，该公司选择在印度开始其旅程是显而易见的。印度路上大约有250万辆三轮车。他们都是潜在客户。在这个细分市场上，电动汽车的接受度已经很高了——目前该国新三轮汽车销量的40%左右是电动的。因此，当杜贝说他希望在未来6-7年内改造90万辆三轮车时，这听起来并不奇怪。
他表示:“我的专长是扩大规模，这是我在与这么多全球oem合作期间学到的。”“三轮车已经上路了，所以我们的客户就在那里。我们说的是打入全国400-500个城市。还有一些oem会购买我们的套件，这是另一个收入来源。”
通过将电池的初始成本从等式中剔除，并随着时间的推移进行推算，我们就能让司机受益。我们的电动汽车套件大约是(一辆新电动汽车)成本的三分之一。波特·哈里斯，Power Global创始人
此外，该公司还希望通过订阅模式提供电池交换，降低车辆的购置成本，同时解决里程焦虑问题。这也是其他一些公司，如Chetan Maini的Sun Mobility也在尝试的事情。然而，有些人认为固定电池的效率最高——这也是为什么大多数智能手机不再使用可拆卸电池，而可更换电池相对低效的原因之一。
“固定电池的效率更高，但在可更换电池的情况下，效率的损失与好处相比是非常小的。我们的电池已经非常高效，非常有能力处理高冲击和振动负载，灰尘等，”波特说。“通过将电池的初始成本从等式中剔除，并随着时间的推移进行推算，我们能够给司机带来好处。我们的电动汽车套件的成本大约是(一辆新电动汽车)的三分之一。此外，我们可以通过使用可更换电池来降低运营成本，每天为司机节省25%到35%的运营成本。两者结合起来会节省很多钱。”
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In the middle of the pandemic last year, LinkedIn brought Harris and Dubey together and a few messages and many hours of facetime led to the birth of a company--Power Global. Curiously, Dubey and Harris have not even met each other personally.
\"It is actually funny. We have not even met once yet,\" Porter says. \"When we started interacting we weren't even talking about business to start off with. That came much later. At a certain point you just see the people for who they are even if it's over a screen and that was pretty obvious to me.\"
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The aim of the firm is to expedite India's electric mobility<\/a> story in the two and three wheeler segments by covering not just vehicles rolling off the assembly lines or those that will hit the roads in future but also the millions that are already on the road~<\/cite><\/div><\/blockquote>
The aim of the firm is to expedite India's electric mobility story in the two and three wheeler segments by covering not just vehicles rolling off the assembly lines or those that will hit the roads in future but also the millions that are already on the road. It wants to retrofit existing vehicles--replacing the engine and exhaust system with an electric motor and battery, which makes Power Global different from the dozens of startups that have come up in the last couple of years.
\"The concern for the environment is very high everywhere and especially in India which has 14 of the top 20 most polluted cities in the world. With new technologies coming especially in electric vehicles<\/a>, it makes a lot of sense for good high quality products to be manufactured in India,\" Dubey says. \"But the number of EVs that are going on the road are very few so I happened to get in touch with Porter and came up with a strategy of manufacturing high quality, efficient and safe lithium ion battery in a retrofit kit to convert existing vehicles.\"<\/div><\/div>Though it may sound like one, the idea of a retrofit kit to convert existing vehicles into zero emission products isnt that unique. In India too, a number of unorganised players are doing it under the radar in the nooks and corners of the country. What is revolutionary here is the scale that Dubey and Harris want to bring to the table with the assurance that the vehicles would be legal, safe and duly ratified by testing agencies like ARAI.
\"Based on our experience the conversion can be done in just a few hours. People have tried it in regional centres but retrofit is not something that can be done in a small area. There is a requirement of getting them approved by organisations like ARAI if you really want to do it on a scale nationally and to do that you have to behave like an OEM,\" Dubey adds. \"We are the first company to try it at this scale. Because no organized player has tried it yet, there are a lot of opportunities here for us.\"Power Global eZee Battery Module<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>The company recently launched its first swappable lithium ion eZee battery aimed at the e-rickshaw market and is setting up a battery manufacturing factory at a former Honda Logistics site in Greater Noida. It will have a capacity of 1 Gigawatt hour that roughly translates into 400,000 batteries every year. Power Global will be investing Rs 200 crore over the next 2-3 years.
As the largest three wheeler market in the world, the choice for the firm to start its journey in India is an obvious one. There are around 2.5 million three wheelers on the road in India. All of them are potential customers. It is also a segment where the acceptance of EVs is already high--around 40 percent of current new three wheeler sales in the country is electric. So when Dubey says he is looking at converting 9 lakh three wheelers over the next 6-7 years, it does not sound very outlandish.
\"My expertise is in gaining scale and that is what I have learnt while working with so many global OEMs,\" he says. \"The three wheelers are already on the road so our customers are out there. We are talking about tapping into 400-500 cities in the country. Then you also have OEMs who would buy our kits so that is another revenue stream.\"By being able to take the initial cost of the battery out of the equation and extrapolate that over time, we're able to give the benefit to the driver. Our EV kit is somewhere around a third of the cost (of a new EV)Porter Harris, Founder, Power Global<\/cite><\/div><\/blockquote>
Further, the company also wants to offer battery swapping through the subscription model which brings down the acquisition cost of the vehicle while solving the problem of range anxiety. It is also something that a number of other companies like Chetan Maini's Sun Mobility are also trying. Yet, there are some who believe a fixed battery offers the highest efficiency--one of the reasons why most smartphones dont have removable batteries anymore, and a swappable battery is relatively inefficient.
\"Fixed batteries are more efficient but in the case of swappable batteries the loss of efficiency is very minor as compared to the benefits. Our battery is already extremely efficient and very capable of handling high shock and vibration loads, dust etc,\" says Porter. \"By being able to take the initial cost of the battery out of the equation and extrapolate that over time, we're able to give the benefit to the driver. Our EV kit is somewhere around a third of the cost (of a new EV). Further, we can bring down operational costs by having a swappable battery, saving the driver somewhere between 25 and 35 percent in operating costs per day. Both combined that is a lot of savings.\"
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