An electric solution to beat pollution woes

A spike in pollution levels and terrible Air Quality Indices (AQI) in the National capital and many parts of the Gangetic plains has bought pollution back in the news. This has been a major issue and recently more than 25 Indian cities were part of an ignominious list of top polluted cities on Earth. This situation was what propelled Saurav Kumar to set up Euler Motors in 2018.

Euler Motors is an automotive technology start-up that is currently focussing on three and four-wheelers’ light commercial vehicle markets. “There are many reasons for the growing air pollution in cities. Transport contributes a massive share. With a transition from internal combustion engines to new-age electric vehicles, India could save $60 billion in fuel costs and cut down 1 gigatonne of carbon emissions. We aim at bringing about this switch smoothly with eco-friendly transport,” says Kumar.

Kumar, who believes that e-vehicles will be the disruptor in the automotive sector, says the most important things they considered were the need of creating an evolved ecosystem for electric vehicles and using technology to ensure sustainable last mile transport.

Electric vehicles have been spoken about in the past few years but are yet to take off in India. Kumar says: “The main reason is the lack of proper charging infrastructure and range anxiety. Setting up the required infrastructure is going to fast forward the transition to EVs. The idea is to develop high-performance e-vehicles and create a conducive environment to increase the adoption of e-vehicles.” Euler Motors has set-up around 100 charging stations in the Delhi-NCR.

Building for India

“We wanted to choose the components best suited for Indian roads and weather conditions,” says Saurav. Currently, it has 200 prototype light cargo vehicles running in New Delhi-NCR, which are being used by e-commerce players like Big Basket, EcomExpress, Udaan and Milk Basket. “ In the next 18 months, we will expand to the south as well. The blueprint is ready. We know the challenges and have a solution. “

Kumar adds, “By the next financial year, we plan to get 3000 vehicles on board.” The company says that its cargo vehicles have the capacity to carry 500 kilograms. Euler motors have received the first series of investments of around $2 million from Blume Ventures, Emergent Ventures and Andrew Lee.

Battery pack

The battery pack used for the vehicles are built in-house. “When we started, we couldn’t find any automotive grade battery-pack manufacturers. We were particular about what we wanted and decided to build the battery pack first. Our R&D team is focused on building automotive-grade lithium-ion battery pack that could deliver the range required for intra-city logistics in all-weather, temperatures and road conditions.” Kumar says. The company currently makes a Li-Ion battery pack of 5.76 KWh for its vehicles.

There are around 200 people working with Euler motors with 40 people in the core team. The company plans to spread to tier-2 and tier-3 cities in the next five years to further increase the adoption of its ‘eco-friendly electric vehicles with superior intra-city mobility experience’.