Opportunities for the EV ecosystem
As seen by a highway EV road tripper
If you are building something in the Indian EV ecosystem, especially for 4W or the charging, then this post is for you! My name is Priyans and I have driven over 50,000 km in just over two years in my MG ZS EV. Here’s the list of places I have been to.
All the data from these trips is publicly available here and here. Road trip driving and charging experiences are available in the ‘Archives’ section on this website. Based on these road trips and studying the state of EV charging infrastructure in India, I have some recommendations for startups / companies.
Housekeeping
Before we get to the recommendations, here’s a message from my company.
Do you also feel stuffy when sitting in the AC for too long? Verify it with data by getting an air quality test for as low as INR 699/-. Don’t ignore the discomfort, ask ActiveBuildings to fix it.
Disclosure - I am the cofounder of ActiveBuildings.
I am planning to produce a short video or a podcast for the Kolkata - Mumbai & Mumbai - Delhi leg of the journey. I am looking for someone who can help me craft a story with their editing skills. Please drop me an email on priyansevs@gmail.com if you are interested to collaborate with the project. I have a lot of dash cam clips, some videos and photos from the phone and lots of voice recordings from the trip.
Producing content needs money and I have limited resources. I do not want to take on any sponsors to continue maintaining my independence. The only way for the production to be funded is by the readers. I will figure out the logistics and reach out for your support.
Also, if you work with Stripe, or know your way around it, or know someone who knows someone, then please reach out to me! Stripe hasn’t released my funds for over 60 days and their support / ombudsman are useless. A beer on me, if you can help me out.
Let’s Go!
This is the opportunity for new age companies to change the ways of auto industry in India. No traditional car companies in India have solved these customer pain points.
All in one charging station app / Route planning
Context : India has close to 100 Charge Point Operators (CPOs). Each time someone wants to fast charge a car, they need to ensure they have the right app out of the 100 apps, login credentials and wallet balance to fast charge their cars in the middle of the trips.
MG and Tata, the leading EV players in India do not offer reliable in car route planning.
Some Indian companies are trying to make EV road tripping easier for customers. It is a legitimate anxiety riddled problem to solve. Though, none of the solutions are at par.
Route planning for a road trip is a different experience for every driver. The apps never ask basic questions like - Do you drive with the AC on or off? At what State of Charge are you comfortable to arrive at your destination / charging stop? Are you looking to slow charge at some specific stops? Is this a relaxed trip or do you want to get to your destination in the fastest possible time? What is the real world highway range that you often get in your car? What is a comfortable driving speed? Where do you plan to stop overnight, if any? Preferred food breaks / timings?
Answers to these questions can greatly impact the road trip experience - including charging, range, etc.
The route planning also needs to account for weather along the route, elevation and wind speed. Most companies do not consider these.
To get real world and satisfactory route planning, the startups need to invest a lot more time in collecting local data. This kind of local data can be possible only when startups ask their users to input it for every trip, which is friction. Or the companies can tap into the car to get this data automagically.
Must haves - Personal preferences, live statuses of charging points, weather data, Android Auto / Apple CarPlay compatible app.
Biggest bottleneck for route planning companies - CPOs and Car OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers).
The top three CPOs, as of Feb 2024, have almost 50% of the infrastructure with them. The top ten have 75%. They have put in the dollars to setup this infrastructure.
The top CPOs in the country can come together and have a single app for charging and payments. Or allow payments to all networks using their own apps. The ball is in their court to ease the customer’s pain, if they so wish to.
Should the top CPOs be doing this - Yes.
Will the top CPOs do it today - No.
Most of the top CPOs are in expansion mode right now. They have money to build out a resilient and reliable network. The government is pumping money via Oil Marketing Companies. This isn’t the time of cooperation, this is the time of cut throat competition.
Charging Station Real Time Status and Payments
It is virtually impossible for a third party (i.e. non CPOs) to obtain the real time status of a charger without the buy in from the CPO. Route planning or in car navigation will be unreliable till then.
Today, while planning a trip, I have to check on each and every CPO’s app, multiple times a day before the trip, to ensure that it is always online. Statiq has recently pushed out this very handy update. Other CPOs MUST BLINDLY COPY IT ALREADY.
CPOs control the bulk of the information flow and might not want to part with it. If someone has access to real time status of the CPO’s network, the CPOs best and worst charging stations are easily highlighted. The data can also show most used, most outages, least frequented, least outages stations. Companies in possession of this data can share it with CPO competitors to provide unfair advantage.
Companies aggregating charging points can figure out a way to ‘pay’ for a user’s charging session, solving the multiple wallets problem, but without the blessings of the CPOs, this seems unlikely to go any far. Payments is a great to have feature and not a must have.
Tata can atleast show the real time status of the chargers from Tata PEZC network in cars’ navigation (it doesn’t exist) or on their ‘connected car’ app. They do neither, despite being a market leader in both passenger 4W EVs and public charging infrastructure.
OBD
OBD (On Board Diagnostics) is a magical piece of hardware that can be connected to any car. Access to OBD and CAN (Controller Area Network) bus lines can spit out highly valuable data. You can get the state of charge, battery’s state of health, battery temperature, motor temperature, maximum cell voltage, minimum cell voltage, speed of the car, battery coolant temperature, and a lot more.
The data is 0s and 1s on the OBD port. This data is streamed via bluetooth. Not all OEMs allow the data to be decoded in a straight forward way. There’s some work in the open source domain. I can read the data for my MG ZS EV using the OBD and an Android app. Unable to read Tata’s. OEMs should be forced to provide basic decoded data about the cars either in the instrument cluster or on the OBD port.
What can you do with this data?
Route planning becomes a lot easier. Constant feedback from the car can tweak the algorithm appropriately. For some car models, this data can help predict better range than the one shown on the instrument cluster.
One can also understand internal data about the battery. This critical information can be used to evaluate the value of EVs being sold in the second hand market. A company could give a certificate stating that this is a third party SoH. Just reading the SoH data and giving a certificate will not work. You need to do a lot more than that.
You can also figure out what cells in the battery pack will need replacement. OBD data can also be crucial in setting up third party service centres and fixing the cars. OBD can also allow you to provide additional features like SEXY buttons.
OBD data can be used to help transition ICE drivers to electric vehicles.
Education
There’s a dearth of providing right education to the right people. There’s a learning curve when a customer transitions from an ICE vehicle to an EV. Appropriate training can be provided to the customers to get them accustomed to their new electric vehicles.
Customers often have questions about the range, performance, battery tech and service. This Zerodha’s Varsity kind of app can be the one stop place to get all answers. The OEMs should be doing it, but they have other priorities right now.
If you are the B2B kind; training manufacturing, service and sales staff can be your domain. Massive reskilling and retraining opportunities here.
Secondary EV Market
Today, EVs are sold cheaply in the second hand market. The dealers have set a bad precedent. The customers are left with little choice because most of the online platforms aren’t buying second hand EVs either. I doubt either of the two have independently collected battery data. There is a lot of value in exploring this market.
Telegram and WhatsApp communities are a good place to find listings.
Predicting how long the battery pack will last is an excellent value add for the second hand EV market players.
The cars’ battery packs can be bought, studied and could be offered as battery replacement services in a couple of years from now. They could also offer ‘upgradable’ battery packs once the startups understand the OEM’s EV architecture.
The battery packs from the second hand cars can also serve as storage for renewable power plants or backups for generators etc.
These are some of my ideas and wish lists from the driving experience I’ve had so far. I did the same exercise a couple of years ago and some companies listened! Drop a comment to share your idea!
Summary
The ideas are plenty in the ecosystem. The founders should work smart and hard to breakaway from the traditional auto industry. A new dawn awaits.
I have not covered manufacturing opportunities in this article.
You can follow me on X, LinkedIn and YouTube. Also, subscribe if you’d like to read more from me.
This piece can be re-published (CC BY-NC-SA) with a line mentioning ‘This was originally published on ExpWithEVs.in’ and a link back to this page. In case of re-publishing, please alert priyansevs@gmail.com
Author : Priyans Murarka
Great efforts are made by you to write such a a informative article, thanks for sharing your experience and knowledge 👍
Somebody gotta do this quick 👀