Congratulations to Simple to reaching so far… their images in the background gives a lot of confidence in Simple.
There is a good chance that Simple is being delayed by the ICE competitorsexisting from Licence Raj with their lobbing power within the bureaucracy.
1. Best thing about Simple is the dual battery system.
In one shot it solves the infrastructure problem. This is a problem both Ather & Ola fail to address. Hero Electric, Okinawa & Ampere sales happened ONLY due to their portable battery feature. Was dual battery not common sense? Simple will be able to rack up sales of 10,000 scooters per month pretty quickly just based on this factor alone.
This again shows that Indian problems need Indian solutions not Chinese solutions.
This feature also puts Simple in a safe zone at least for the next 1 to 2 yrs because there is no competition for them of a similar scooter.
2. Ola had taken off to a flying start but it’s seriously failing front fork and almost lack of service pulled it back quite a bit.
Two big threats like Hero Electric & Okinawa were neutralised due to their FAME2 issues, PureEV due to their battery fire issue. It looks like these 3 might not recover. Revolt & Chetak are refusing to run in the race and prefer to walk. iQube made startling sprint to join the pack of front runners but still needs to be consistent.
Now the eScooter race looks more like a 5 scooter race – Ola, Ampere, Ather, iQube & Simple. This makes it a 100% organic made in India race leaving behind the Chinese.
I wager 10,000 sales per state almost from the very first month for Simple.
I hope after Bangalore they go first to:
Kerala –in Kerala they need to target just Kakkanad, Kozhikode, Thrissur & Kochi
UP – Noida, Lucknow, Prayagraj, Kanpur, Kanpur, Meerut, Agra
Bihar
and then Mumbai. There is a lot of interest in electric vehicles in Kerala much more than in other states of India… in comparison there is hardly any EV love in Mumbai. They need not target any other state at least for another 5 yrs.
2. If Simple provides Scooter service centres then they can be a hit in a very big way. They need not create anything from ground up. There are so many scooter repair shops all across the town. Simple just needs to provide them with free training in electric scooter repairs and sell them scooter parts. Only the battery repair need to be attended by Simple.
If these guys are promised a bottle of Beer & Biryani they will run and come to training daily, else there is a chance they might not show up at all. All they need is 1 or 2 day introduction to the scooter as they are already know their trade well.
These repair shops will also be able to repair other scooters with parts provided by Simple. This will save a lot of investment of setting up their own repair shops and staff.
Simple should need to set up a temporary training centre in every city and provide their contact information on their website than take up the responsibility of repairing every single scooter by themselves.
3. Proprietary Charging will not be a big problem for Simple as much as they are with non-portable battery scooter because in case of emergency the batteries can be carried to be charged at your office or house or some restaurant.
4. Simple one can use solar panels on its roof to reduce their electricity consumption and indeed they will be using a lot of electricity to charge these scooters up.
5. Its exciting to see that the 3 best eScooter makers in India Ola, Ather & Simple have electric car ambition.
The things I was not so happy was:
a) The use of NMC chemistry combined with no liquid cooling.
This combined with the fact that this is a high energy drawing very high speed scooter makes me very uncomfortable. They are walking the same path PureEV took.
It would have been ok in a slow speed scooter but to use NMC in high speed scooter without cooling is playing with fire… literally.
b) Use of SIM card in a scooter.
This is bound to increase the monthly expenses of the scooter. A scooter user will be concerned about its monthly expense… and gives a damn about OTA. This is such a silly issue why they seem to be using SIM card in a scooter is really dumb.
Using SIM card in a car is ok because difference of Rs 100 per month will not affect a car owner as much as it will affect a scooter owner.
Expense cost of SIM card data +GST will take away more customers than scooters without simcard… is it so difficult to understand?
IF you are making a 3lakh or 5 lakh scooter by all means use SIM card. But please don’t shove up a sim card in an entry level scooter.
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