Kinetic Green focusing on e-commerce with new cargo EV

Kinetic Safar Jumbo has a specially developed cargo box with close to 150 sq ft cubic capacity, has a payload of 500 Kg and costs Rs 2.5 lakh (ex-showroom).

Keeping in mind the e-commerce boom, Kinetic Green Energy and Power Solutions Limited on Tuesday launched the Safar Jumbo high performance electric cargo three-wheeler.

We hope to sell 5000 vehicles in the next six to seven months and our target for next year would be about 12-15 thousand vehicles,” said Sulajja Firodia Motwani, Founder and CEO, Kinetic Green Energy and Power Solutions.

We developed the vehicle with the boom and requirements of the e-commerce industry in mind. This customer base is sophisticated and focused about their requirements. They have specific routes and their loads are predictable. Their requirement is more of volume than load. They are also committed to using sustainable vehicles in their fleet,” she said.

“Retail e-commerce companies and online grocery shopping have their own goals for sustainable logistics and they are very keen to move to electric vehicles also to get more affordable delivery per kilometre,” she added.

The price is Rs 2.5 lakh (ex-showroom) with the battery. This price is after a subsidy of about Rs 60,000.

“If the battery is removed and the customer goes for battery swapping, it will cost about 40 per cent less. It will be available from November. The commercial launch will be after Diwali. The battery swapping model will be on a pay as per use basis,” she said.

The Kinetic Safar Jumbo, which falls in the L5 category, has a GVW of over one ton, with a specially developed cargo box with close to 150 sq ft cubic capacity and a payload of 500 Kg.

“The battery price is around Rs 1.35 lakh. The vehicle will have an 8 KWh battery. It will require close to three and a half to four hours to charge fully. Another one with a 10 KWh battery will also be launched. The vehicle will have a speed of 55 Kmph and a range of about 120 Km,” she informed.

“We are performing pilot tests with two leading e-commerce companies to see that it meets their requirements,” she remarked, but declined to name the companies.

“The telematics also allows information to be collected and used for optimising delivery routes. We have tried to initially focus on e-commerce which are not built on overloading as a principle. We would like to go step-by-step and develop other applications like waste collection or gas delivery,” she added.

The icing on the cake is that it is fully localised. “It is 100 per cent localised including the battery. But the battery cells are imported by the battery manufacturers from China, Taiwan, Korea or Japan but we are buying batteries locally,” she stated.

Initially, the focus would be on sales in cities like Bengaluru, Pune, Hyderabad, Gurgaon, Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata.