The 'Uber for Trucks' - How ElectronEV is Building New Methods of Design & Assembly for Commercial Vehicles

ElectronEV’s founders and industry veterans Rakesh Koneru and Vinay Jayachand have been working in the electrification of the commercial vehicle segment back when Tesla was working on its early Roadsters, and when electrification technology and supply chain systems were practically non-existent. In fact, in the 10 years that they’ve been in this space, the duo have played an instrumental role in deploying the first vehicles not just to brands like United Parcel Service (UPS) and Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), but also to the United States Department of Defence.

Founded in early 2020,  ElectronEV is based out of the Bay Area in the US, and Hyderabad, India, 

“We wanted to stick to our core strength, which has been in the high tonnage, high usage vehicle segment,” explains Koneru. “When it comes to the commercial vehicle (CV) space, we believe that one solution will not work for all applications. The passenger segment, whether it is two, three, or four-wheelers, their payload capacity or distances, when their need to travel is well-defined, a fixed battery pack size with a fixed motor and a fixed charging application will work 99% of the cases. But the CV space is very fragmented and application-driven."

When it comes to commercialisation, the founders do not believe in the traditional mindset.

"For example, a fixed battery pack will not work for all use cases. As we all know, in electrification, sizing of the battery is extremely important to the application, because there can be use cases where the vehicle would be driven for only 50 kilometres each day. Or when the consumer has break times of over 2-3 hours, when they load or unload something and can do opportunity charging. Another deviance could be where the day trip itself is 40-50 kilometres, so sizing the pack would be extremely important to reduce the cost and the weight of the overall truck. And so, we strongly believe in that modular approach from battery-level-up design,” says Koneru.

To cater to each of these use cases, ElectronEV has been taking a modular approach, while ensuring that the solution is end-customer-centric, cost comparative and a long-term success. Certain technologies are being standardised based on the application. While the vehicle platform is standard, customers can choose their software stack and battery stack based on their applications.

If application is ElectronEV’s primary area of focus, vertical integration closely follows in its list of priorities. Unlike most startups that don't give much thought to in-house technology and in-house control of products, this is an area that Electron EV has heavily invested its time and money into for the last three years.

More Than Just a Vehicle Manufacturer

Currently, the only missing piece in its technology stack that the company doesn’t have control over is the vehicle chassis. This is the only reason why it can’t be termed as an 'OEM'. But, that apart, ElectronEV controls each and every component that goes on to its vehicle, making it an electric vehicle, zero-emission vehicle.

What this means is that ElectronEV isn’t restricted to being just a vehicle company. It can now offer a full end-to-end mobility solution, right from defining the vehicle to the customers’ application, setting up the charging stations, managing those charging stations, to even managing the logistics. All in all, ElectronEV could now be a one-stop-shop, or an 'Uber for trucks', as Koneru put it.

The company also wants to get into manufacturing, but as Koneru explains, there will be layers and phases of how it approaches this.

“The end goal for ElectronEV is to be a publicly listed company within the next nine to 10 years. With that broader vision, and with the seed fund that we have as a starting point, we have done certain things. For starters, we built a genuine powertrain platform with a software-driven solution that belongs to ElectronEV. We have retrofitted that electrification power train platform into a vehicle platform in India. Following phases of testing and demonstrations, we have received our first LoI from a big Indian logistic company, but at the same time, we’re also trying to work with 2-3 LoIs with a range of customers from agriculture, heavy industries, to oil refineries as well."

In parallel, the company envisions building its own vehicle in the future.

"We will be heavily investing in material science to reduce the vehicle chassis weight. The second generation system will consist of our powertrain integrated into our vehicle chassis on a skateboard platform that is modular. That will get us going towards volumes. Moving forward, we’re getting into the power platform in the next 18 to 24 months, building about 200-300 vehicles in that timeframe in a re-powered platform. That’s also when we’d also go into customer acquisition mode, and look at raising investments towards building our skateboard architecture, our second-generation systems,” he says.

Scaling up Micro Factories

ElectronEV’s approach towards manufacturing is a unique one. Termed as a 'micro factory', it involves being where the customer is going to be. This takes away a lot of challenges when it comes to setting up a factory, the most obvious one being the capital expenditure being involved.

But interestingly, Koneru mentioned some other factors that have not been thought of enough - the many challenges that distance tend to bring up, especially when building a near-custom solution, geopolitical issues, issues of being constrained to a single location, finding the right talent in a niche like electrification, among others.

“Not to forget that it will also help the local economies to grow where the factories are,” Koneru adds. "Now, instead of creating an ecosystem in one location, I can create the ecosystem in 10 locations. There will be vendors, there will be economical movement, which will ultimately benefit the community. You can take several communities along with you in terms of creating jobs and using less resources out of a single location, and finding diverse talent.”

When asked what the short and long term future looks like for a company as fresh and innovative as ElectronEV, Koneru says: “We have the Gen 1 of our powertrain platform, which we call Amber. We're actively working on it with multiple customers. The short-term goal is to produce a minimum of about 200-300 hundred vehicles in the immediate 18 to 24 months. The long-term plan is to build our own skateboard architecture, with all of these features that I've just explained. We’re also looking to scale up the micro factories to about 15 factories in the next nine to 10 years, as well as scale the volumes to around 100,000 to 150,000 vehicles within the next nine to 10 years. And then there is becoming a publicly listed company."

“We are heavily in India as of right now, because re-powering is a market segment that we can only explore in India, and not in the Western markets. That is the main reason why we started aggressively campaigning in India. We will be starting off with three powers in India, while the focus in the US will be more on providing the IP to the company. At the same time as we scale up investments, the North American market will be equally looked at along with India within the next one year. After these two markets, Year 4 onwards, we'll be looking to expand our presence in South-east Asia and certain parts of Africa,” he explains.

That’s not all. ElectronEV is also setting up charging facilities at convenient locations, as well as working on a B2B vehicle-to-vehicle charging solution, which it calls 'opportunity charging'. Through this model, the company is building trucks that will not only act as a truck, but also as an energy provider to an end-user. This truck can charge anything, right from an electric car to another electric truck, providing energy as a service to its customers.

Where all these innovations take ElectronEV remains to be seen, but for now, this unique company looks set to grow and shine.