Took a Bla Bla car from Dehradun. Volunteered for driving duty around Muzaffarnagar. Nice to have someone correct your while you are driving – was warned of lane violations by the young car owner. Reached Ghaziabad by 2030 hrs. Got dropped off right on the Vaishali Metro station road. Met up with Rakesh, who was returning from a Patanjali distributor meet in Haridwar. Visited with Chacha ji and saw Chandni’s new house in Indirapuram.
Had decided to skip breakfast the next morning, but Sheetal’s offer of Sattu ka Paratha was too tempting to turn down. Got dropped off by Sudeep to Noida Electronics City metro station, the current last stop of the Blue Line. Went back towards Dwarka and swapped Metros at Sector 51/52. The Greater Noida metro does not accept the DMRC metro card, so had to buy a Rs. 40 ticket to reach Knowledge City – 2 metro station, which is 500 m from the Auto Expo venue. Walked down to Gate 10 to collect my entry pass, should have gone anti clockwise – would have reached faster.
Spent quite some time at the Tata stall, thanks to meeting up with Manek of Tata Motors from their marketing team. Apart from the Nexon, the Electric Altroz was also on display – but it was just a styling exercise. Was told that it would share the same battery pack motor combo as the Nexon. Spent more time with the Tata Electric bus. Shared feedback about my Cal bus journey with TML guys. Interestingly, the batteries are on the roof for the Tata bus. Assume that the battery would be weighing around 3 t. The GVW of an electric 12 m bus is 19.5 t. For a non electric similar bus, GVW is 16.5 t. The motor is placed behind the rear axle and is connected by a prop shaft to the differential.
In contrast, for the BYD Olectra bus, there are two separate motors on both rear wheels. Also, in Olectra, some of the batteries are below the floor. Am not sure of the IP rating of the batteries, but a roof design will definitely wade better in waterlogged streets. Rain should not be as much a problem as standing water. From a stability and CG point of view, underfloor batteries are better. One hypothesis is that underfloor batteries are IP67 rated. And IP65 batteries, which are much cheaper, are roof mounted. The Tata design is still a throwback on rear engine buses with raised seats in the rear. I asked the Tata team the reason. Because Governments are yet to change specs for electric buses. The highest marketshare in the electric bus market is with BYD. The Olectra guys are able to offer more competitive per km rates to Municipalities. TML is typically offering Rs. 75 per km and Olectra is about 60 per km. BYD has economies of scale – and more experience with electric buses – but the TML guys feel that there is some undercutting going on.
Olectra has better range. They commit to 250 km, which is the average daily running distance for buses. We discussed intercity, where the runs can easily be 400 km a day, making the asset sweat more. Olectra also is not in a condition to crack the intercity market. Range anxiety. Range will go up if AC is switched off. But with such heavy capex, operators would want to target higher fare paying customers. (Talking of least sweat, school buses will be the last to convert to electric, as they run just 20,000 km a year.) For example, Mumbai Pune will require a fast charger at Khopoli. Can coincide with a washroom stop. Incidentally, Tata Motors is evaluating pantograph based fast DC charging, which will shave a few minutes off the fast charging time. Tata Power can definitely look at setting up fast chargers. A lot of EVs would be interested in a shared fast charging facility.
One of the interesting stalls that I visited was that of Great Wall Motors. This is the company that has taken over the Talegaon factory of GM. Hopefully their VFM electric car – the R3 will get manufactured here. The inside news is that their first car will be a petrol one – the electric will come only after a few months. Abhay’s ex colleague from TCS, Ramesh, was working at Great Wall R and D center at Baoding, about 200 miles from Beijing. He spent quite some time with us telling us about the company and its products. Originally, the company had a single brand – Great Wall. But over the years they have a whole brand family: Haval – China’s equivalent of M and M – the largest selling SUV brand. Then there is Wey, the luxury brand and Ora, the electric brand. GWM EVs use LFP Prismatic batteries. The battery pack fits into the floor – and the motor, controller and gear box are integrated into a single unit, which fits into the engine compartment. This design is fairly standard when a common chassis is used across petrol and EV. The Chinese government is slowly phasing out subsidies on EVs. Future technologies on which subsidies are going to be directed are in solid state batteries – and fuel cells.
Abhay and Yours truly did a few customer visits to EV two wheeler stalls at the Expo. Amongst the companies we visited were: Okinawa, Kabira, Hero Electric, EeVee (A Bhubaneshwar based company – eeveindia.com. These guys had the highest enthu levels in our discussions. We talked to Jay Prakash Didwania, the chairman.) Evolet was another company that seems to have big budgets. However their tech head was not too happy with the preliminary discussions we had with him. Incidentally, they seem to have a model common with EeVee.
Hero Electric had an interesting trike on display. There is a 4 bar mechanism at the front, which ensures that the vehicle can tilt during turns. However, this means that it is also unbalanced when stationary. To compensate for this there was a built in gyro in the vehicle. Although there is a center stand, the vehicle had a provision where you could just leave it on gyro stabilised mode. Of course, it would keep draining your battery to do that. On the whole, not a very happy experience.
Saw the Yamaha mid drive cycle of Hero cycles. Costs 1 lakh plus. The frame welding at the center was very sub standard. Doubt if it would get too many customers. In contrast, they have upgraded their entry level cycle Lectro and raised price to Rs. 21 K. Kenda tyres have been added. The mid range cycle is now available at Rs 31 K. Promotion for the Lectro brand has commenced. Was quite happy to note that they have sold 15,000 cycles since launch. Talked to the Pune dealer, my friend Maninder, and he reports that he is selling 20 cycles a month.
Next visit was to the Mahindra stall. There was a concept eXUV 300, which had some funnily protruding indicator LED lamps. Their new entry level electric car – the EKUV 100 was on display. However, there were no test rides happening. Test rides were happening on the new quadricycle – the Atom. This is a Bajaj Qute sized 4 wheeler, 3 seater. It is meant to be a rickshaw replacement. There is no front passenger seat in this 2 door vehicle. Maybe if they had kept a left rear door and omitted the front, it would have made for more passenger convenience. But I guess asymmetrical designs are not very popular. There were quite a few electric goods carriers as well. One that I would single out was the Treo. What was special was the booster battery pack – think of it as a 10 kg power bank for your vehicle. Though some of my EV industry friends doubt the efficacy of using a power bank approach to buffer battery.
One of our neighbours in Pune was also a neighbour in the Expo. The Chakan based Battrixx. (https://battrixx.com/) Parent company is Kabra Plastic Extrusion, with HO in Mumbai and plant in Daman. They have a 6 acre plant in Chakan. Still in the research phase. No customers yet. Have 30 + guys working in the R and D team. Abhay knew the tech guy there, Mr Mahajan, an ex colleague from Mahindra Reva. Have shared Kamlesh’s number to him – so that we can visit his plant at Chakan. They have standardized on NMC batteries. Was interesting to note the coolant ports for their 70 AH, 72 V battery. Also terminals for the battery are separated, with increased voltage. Saw that arrangement in the Kia fast charger as well.
On my return journey to Pune from Jammu, dropped in at Delhi again. Had a side lower berth on the Rajdhani. It’s probably the most challenging berth in winter – as the entire window glass becomes freezing cold – and radiates the cold. The train was before time. Heated up with some interesting Cheellahs at my sister’s place in Noida – and caught the Metro to Pragati Maidan station, nowadays called the Supreme Court station. Visited the Auto Expo components stall. Didn’t spend too much time at Vijay’s stall there.
Visited the stall of ElringKlinger, a German company that makes fuel cells. The company is more than a hundred years old – and their first product still continues to be made today – engine cylinder head gaskets. They are leveraging their competence in metal and plastic processing to get into PEFMC (Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell) stacks. Fuel cells use hydrogen as input. The hydrogen atoms are pushed across a membrane – where only the proton goes past. The membrane has an embedded electrolyte, which can be potassium hydroxide, salt carbonates, or phosphoric acid. The electron remains at the anode – and pushes back the electron through the wires and motors to the cathode. At the cathode, the electron joins the proton and an oxygen atom, in order to form water. This combination requires the presence of a catalyst. The platinum anode catalyst breaks down the hydrogen into electrons and ions. The nickel cathode catalyst converts these hydrogen ions into water. Each cell generates about 1.7 V of potential difference – of which 0.4 V is used up in getting the positive hydrogen ions across the membrane.
There is a lot of thermal energy that is generated in the hydrogen – oxygen combination. In a stationary application, this heat can be used for running a turbine. In auto application, there will be a requirement of a coolant to keep catalyst functioning at lower temperatures. Also, in auto application, there will be a small battery onboard, which will serve to buffer the electricity for the motor. We discussed hydrogen generation. The cheapest process involves heating methane to temperatures of 700 C. CH4 + H2O (+ heat) → CO + 3H2 In steam-methane reforming, methane reacts with steam under pressure in the presence of a catalyst to produce hydrogen, carbon monoxide, and a relatively small amount of carbon dioxide. Here is a page about the company’s fuel cell work – https://www.elringklinger.com/en/products-technologies/electromobility/fuel-cells
Ion Energy (www.ionenergy.co) is a pure BMS company. They are vendors to Airbus, Tata Motors and Ola. The Airbus relationship is probably because one of the cofounders of this Mumbai based company is French. They earlier also tried their hands at Battery packs, but are now content just to be tech providers. Exicom is one of their large customers. Had a quick tutorial on how a BMS works at the Ion stall. The inputs to the BMS from the battery side are Voltage, Temperature and Current. From the chassis, the BMS takes signals from ignition key, side stand interlock etc. From the motor, the BMS, through the PDU (Protocol Data Unit) gets information about the motor speed through Hall Effect Sensors. The output of the BMS is routed through a CAN bus – and talks to the load. The load is your typical motor controller, which is basically a DC to DC converter, which varies motor speed by varying applied voltage. The other communication that happens is between BMS and the charger. I assume that the BMS controls the rate of current flow that the charger sends into the battery. The Ion Energy brochure talks of a Precharge switch. Another interesting parameter was the balancing current per cell – 147 mA @ 4.2 V. Need to find out from Abhay, what could be the functionality of the switch and how exactly the balancing system works. Ion has an 8 GB micro SD card, where up to 20 years of history (61 variables log) can be stored. One more interesting thing that was there on their website were blogs. Particularly loved this one – https://www.ionenergy.co/resources/blogs/battery-safety-top-5-reasons-lithium-ion-batteries-catch-fire/
Next was Exicom. https://www.exicom-ps.com/ Exicom has been promoted by the Nahatas of the HFCL group. The company started in 1994, as a JV with the Australia based Exicom. I assume that a majority of their 140 m $ revenue is still driven by telecom. Given the synergies between the EV and the telecom business, these guys have a head start in the market, as most of the stuff is common to both industries. Exicom seems to be preferring NMC batteries for their EV solutions – attracted by the high density of energy storage 154 Wh/kg or 244 Wh/litre for their Cube 72V, 28 Ah battery, which weighs 13.5 kg. This pack is rated for a peak power performance of 5 kW (69 A) for up to 10 seconds. The exterior casing is a single piece aluminum extrusion. Thanks to the extrusion design, the battery is IP67 rated. Possibly the single piece extrusion may also help better thermal management. Like our battery, even this one has passive cooling. Battery dimensions are 210 by 160 mm by 265 mm. The cross section dimensions of 210 by 160 should be a target that we should aim to achieve. It may be a good idea to check out where they are sourcing the extrusions from. We can reduce a lot of capex if we can do our pouch fitting in that space – and go for the same vendor.
Another interesting item from the brochure is a self discharge rate of just 3% per month. It’s almost 1% a day for the E2O – I wonder is it a function of the NMC battery chemistry? Charging happens at 0.5 C – which means that you discharge at 28 A, but can charge only at 14 A. At this rate you can be done with your charging in 2 hours. Exicom also was advertising a swap solution. Their station can hold upto 20 batteries – laid horizontally – with a single handle at the top of each battery. Their solution is standardized for a 48 V, 35 Ah battery. The peak power drawn by the 20 battery channel charger is 28 kW. Requires a 3 phase connection. Charging connector is SBS 75 X. IP 54 rated. Exicom buys batteries from Phylon, one of the largest NMC cell manufacturers in China. Phylon has a market share of more than 50% in the Indian EV market.