Tag Archives: EV

Ather Electric Scooter to be Showcased at Surge, Bangalore

Finally after years and months of waiting… Ather is due to display its fabled Electric Scooter at SURGE, Bangalore which is Web Summit’s first technology summit which will be held in India between Feb 23-24, 2016. 

This is Gogoro Electric Scooter… just for reference… how technology can handicap a scooter to lonely single person device 😉

Bangalore, Jan 28th, 2016: India’s first smart electric scooter will debut at SURGE on 23rd February. The scooter is the maiden venture of Ather Energy, a Bangalore based technology start-up by IIT graduates Tarun Mehta & Swapnil Jain.

“Ather Energy is very thrilled to be part of SURGE as it is one of the most influential technology summits in the world…. As the launch will bring to fruition the exciting journey that we started two years ago” says Tarun Mehta, CEO and co-founder of Ather Energy on their website.

SURGE is Web Summit’s first conference in India. Web Summit is one of the biggest and most popular technology summits globally that is known to be a great platform for start-ups and investors. Over the last few years, Web Summit has seen the participation of technology players ranging from Fortune 500 companies like Apple and Google to the most exciting startups including Airbnb and Uber.

Tarun is also a speaker at SURGE and will speak on the inevitability of electric being the future of automobiles and their “uncompromising electric scooter” – with a powerful Li-ion battery pack and sub-one hour charging.

In an ecosystem dominated by software players, Ather Energy is among the few hardware startups in India. Their first product, the S340 is completely designed in-house and will commence commercial production in Bengaluru later this year.

Story of Tork Motors

 

ARAI, Sarabhai Space Centre to develop car batteries

The Automotive Research Association of India (ARAI) and Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) are to collaborate to develop a battery for passenger cars using technology which is used to make batteries for space vehicles.

ARAI will develop and test the batteries for use in electric and hybrid electric vehicles and offer the technology to manufacturers for mass production. This will significantly cut their cost, ARAI Director Rashmi Urdhwareshe said. She was speaking to reporters at the golden jubilee celebrations of the research organisation.

The focus of the research will be to develop technology in EV/HEV applications for Indian automotive industry and… Continue reading

LS-218: The world’s fastest production motorcycle

The Lightning LS-218: fat bump-stop behind the Corbin seat holds the rider in place under extreme ...

The Lightning LS-218: fat bump-stop behind the Corbin seat holds the rider in place under extreme acceleration (Photo: Loz Blain/Gizmag.com)

Image Gallery (31 images)

Last May, when Gizmag first featured the “truly, horrifyingly fast” Lightning LS-218, I ended by saying: “If I could take any bike in the world out for a test today, this would be the top of the list.” Well, after a 17-hour flight halfway around the globe, I have now ridden the Lightning. I have also nearly fallen off it, twice, like a complete idiot. With three times the horsepower and some 70 percent more torque than the Zero SR, which is in itself an extraordinary motorcycle, the LS-218 is the king of a new breed of electric motorcycles – one designed to take on the world’s best petrol bikes and beat them on performance, not just emissions figures. Riding it was one of the most extreme experiences of my young life.

The minute I saw the Lightning LS-218, I knew I had to ride it. It wasn’t just the looks of the thing – although it sure is a beauty. It was the fact that this is an electric motorcycle that actually out-performs anything you can buy that burns dinosaur bones.

It makes 200 horsepower, a ludicrous number but one we’re more or less familiar with in today’s modern superbikes. But, being electric, it makes an absolute mountain of torque – 70 percent more than the punchiest petrol superbike you can buy, and…

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Government, Tax and Oil… the happy nexus!

You hear a lot of talk about the Government setting up targets for Electric Vehicles and the so called not too famous FAME scheme for faster adoption of Electric vehicles. But you dont see any action on the ground. You dont see any company coming forward to create electric cars, nor do you see the government placing any orders for Electric Bus or Cars. No we are not talking about “Pilot Projects” which are… Continue reading

How about an Electric Enfield Bullet?… wanna ride?

The electric Royal Enfield Bullet is based on a 2005 Royal Enfield Bullet 500 and uses batteries from the Nissan Leaf and an electric motor to power the bike. The original 500cc engine and transmission has been completely discarded after a blowout.

Electric Enfield Bullet?... wanna ride?

Electric Enfield Bullet?… wanna ride?

The builder has been working on the… Continue reading

Pedal Powered Farming

culticycle pedal powered tractor 1Imagine this has solar roof and an electric motor!!! Fun to take to the beach & Road!!!

The Culticycle is a pedal powered tractor that can cultivate, seed, spray, or pull gear for most low horsepower tasks. We talked about the first prototype almost two years ago. A new version has now been released, built around a modular tractor frame. Tim Cooke explains us how it’s built and how it works: 

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Top Posts for PlugInCaroo & power of Digital & Social Media

We at PlugInCaroo would love to bring to your attention that the most looked up post on the site. It is definitely “NanoGenX vs Alto vs Eon vs WagonR“…The comparison is made with other cars which are a direct competition to Nano. These were not randomly picked but were carefully selected from a list of cars as these are the MOST SELLING CARS in INDIA.

PlugInCaroo top Posts - 2015

                                               PlugInCaroo’s Top Posts for Year 2015!

Going by numbers on our website… which is not even a website but just a blog-site…yet it was able to have effect-ed at least 100 Tata Nano GenX and 10 Mahindra E2O sales since June 2015. Wonder how many of their sales person make 100 sales in 4 Months? Most of their Dealers and sales people hardly know anything about these cars!! And do you think TATA or Mahindra cares for stuff like which salesman sold how much etc? Ha HA..

The cost of 1 GenX Nano car = Rs 220,000 (ave).

The cost of 100 GenX Nano car = Rs 22,000,000 (ave).

Profit for Company (10%) on 100 GenX car = Rs 22,00,000 (Rs 22Lakh) made just from PlugInCaroo blog in 4months… what do you think is the sales possibility in a year?… multiply 22 lakh x 3 (to get 12 month numbers) = 66 Lakhs… What do you think the company should pay as “advertisement” to the blog? … 10% of its profits? 6 Lakhs? Fair enough? Now imagine if this was a website with proper search engine reach, multiple pages, SEO, digital media and social media suppor, with support staff,  etc? This websites alone could do a minimum of 500 vehicle sales a year. They would still make a profit even after paying Rs 10 Lakh to PlugInCaroo website. That is the power of Social Media now multiple this with a hundred such websites in India and you can see a Tsunami…but unfortunately there are very few independent websites dedicated to Fuel-efficient Vehicles like Nano, electric vehicles and clean energy in India…. in time they might grow.

Why are we asking these questions? Because it is very relevant… and the answer is in the Power and reach of the Internet,  and the social media

Why is PlugInCaroo a blog-site and not a website?… well… we do not want to put money from our pocket to market and sell the cars for companies who do not want to pay for the effort people put in to sell THEIR product on which THEY earn a profit. We have discussed this with many companies at various levels and the response they have is that of amusement to say the least. Simple as that. companies think why to pay “small time” websites to advertise their vehicles as they are already doing multi-million advertisements.

Many companies also feel that its easy for a million $ company to have a website or a blog or forum with people giving positive review of the various vehicles… this is anything but the truth as people reading on the Tata or Mahindra or any such website do know that these people on the website are either getting paid or could even be their own employees… so you can put in 1,000 positive review on company website and these can carry zero value because PEOPLE KNOW… they are not dumb… thats why they are google searching… AWAY from company blogs and even landing on blogs like PlugInCaroo.

Then why are we doing this blogsite? It is just an effort to counter and remove the myth and shit put out by petrol-heads and their websites. Of course paid advertisements could scale up the proportions of the reach of the site.. and increase the sales by that much. Most Car companies sell cars & bikes in the traditional way… by Radio-TV-Newspaper advertisement…  One of the best ways to check if your company is advertising in modern way is to check how much they are

                            A. Spending via the Social Media +Blogs+ the Internet

                                                         V/S

                            B. Spending on Radio+TV+Newspaper.

If the Budget in your company for “B” is greater than the Budget for “A” it means you are advertising the traditional way and almost 60% of that advertisement is wasted. We can’t imagine any CAR or BIKE company  in the world who would have the balls or thought process to have a bigger Social Media+Blog+Internet budget…

Another example is Prashant Kishore who not only orchestrated Narendra Modi’s victory in 2014 General elections but also the victory of the Alliance of Nitish Kumar+Lalu+Congress in Bihar Elections 2015

…And yeah… Just to give you perspective…  there are much more people interested in “Holes in Mikhale Bora’s Story” (posted in Sept) than in Electric vehicles… and that post could, by the end of the year, be the top “searched” post on PlugInCaroo…

PlugInCaroo top Posts – 2015

Ather… dont need to hide behind dazzle prints or camouflage…

Ather… dont make the mistake to hide behind dazzle prints or camouflage… EVs as of now due to their scarcity in India and also due to the fact that most EVs (E2O or chinese scooters) are first generation do not need to hide from cameras…even if the vehicle would go through a future change in design… keep the ev folks informed… like the one where the scooter took had a fall and scratched… thats the kind of news the EV lovers are looking for and these kind of incidents get carried over the Social Media… depending upon how you put it out in the social media…

The biggest problem that EVs ever have in India is VISIBILITY… VISIBILITY…VISIBILITY… even today the biggest problem with E2O is VISIBILITY… VISIBILITY… VISIBILITY… there are hardly any electric vehicles on the road for people to know what is an electric vehicle and what are its advantages. People have never seen a made in India Li-Ion scooter… pictures and videos would help a lot… in Mumbai its said “Jo dikhta hai… wo hi bikta hai“… Celebs have proved this to be true…

But following in the footsteps of a petrol vehicle would be the biggest mistake EVER!

In an EV scenario… creating the vehicle is just half the story… setting up the charging infrastructure is the other half. Petrol vehicles are unfamiliar with such a scenario. Also any company who comes to create the vehicle irrespective of the lack of existence of either electricity or charging infrastructure in that area are definitely trying to climb up a greased pole.

Flaunt the bike… get it across… let it be commented or discussed… dont hold back… let the vehicle industry be shocked with a Bike Company promoting its test Mule… Let There are no Rules…

Dont do it like a Petrol Car/Bike  company does… most of them deal and do business in traditional way of how a refrigerator was sold 20 yrs ago… They usually pull off a silk cloth over the vehicle  and hoist the scooter one final day… and then say ok we have opened the bookings let the money roll in…

If an EV company does this then people usually go… “I was not expecting this”, “expensive”, “do you have pink?”, “too powerful”, “we have power cuts in our area in our areas”, “I cant take it on vacation to the next state”, “I was going to order, but I have to pay my rent” & 101 excuses… but these are people who will not be buying the vehicle.. but have a lot of time to kill on the Internet.These could also be of people who have liked your Facebook page…

What about those people who would be interested as they find the vehicle useful and convenient but is not aware of the bike. In case of such people the news of the scooter will reach him probably 300 days after the bike is showcased in the Dealer showroom. To enable faster reach and wider publicity Ather Energy will have to use every energy of the Social Media and Indian EV websites mainly. And to make this happen they have to stat putting out interesting images & videos of the scooter…

So dont undermine Social Media… it would sell much more vehicles EVER than TV, Radio or Newspaper advertisment TOGETHER!!! Put out as many images and videos of the vehicle but make sure each is different and unique and never repetitive like the NanoGenX “Factory Visit” campaign.

Japanese ElecTrike coming to India…

Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis on Saturday said three Japanese companies have handed over letters of intent for investment in the state under the government’s ‘Make in Maharashtra’ programme.  Of the 3 one is a pharma Company the other is involved in metallurgy  but the  third… the third is involved in Electric Vehicles.Chief executive director of ElecTrike Japan, Noboru Matsunami, disclosed his company’s plan to Continue reading