Electric scooters set to take a bow in AP
Electric scooters set to take a bow in AP
VIJAYAWADA: Electric scooters, battery-driven, could be seen in Andhra Pradesh, beginning with Vijayawada and Visakhapatnam, as early as December, if Avera New & Renewable Energy, a manufacturer of electric scooters, can implement its schedule.
Avera, which has set up an electric scooter assembly unit in Nunna, about 10km here, has already started delivering the vehicles to the B2B (business-to-business) sector, in Hyderabad and Bengaluru, the company’s founder and CEO, Akula Venkata Ramana, who has stylized his name to Ramana ‘ave’, said on Friday.
Ramana said an Avera subsidiary, Amaravati Battery Company, has set up the assembly unit at Nunna with an installed capacity of 25,000 scooters per annum. The company was investing Rs 50 crore in the first phase of the project, which is spread over 63 acres of land.
According to Ramana, Avera had signed a memorandum of understanding with CS Infotel, a South Korean company, for the supply of batteries for the scooters. Avera also had agreements with two companies in China for the supply of battery technology.
“The biggest challenge was to have a battery that will heat up and explodes. We are using lithium ferrous phosphate batteries in our scooters. These batteries have been tested and found to be far more stable than lithium ion batteries,” Ramana said.
Avera was in the process of setting up charging centres in Vijayawada, Mangalagiri, Guntur and Tirupati.
The company will be launching 2 variants of its electric scooters. “Another challenge that we expect to overcome is to provide battery charging centres at convenient locations. The centres will offer two options. The first one can charge a battery up to its optimum level of 80% in 4-5 hours, while the second option would charge a battery in less than 5 minutes,” he said.
Ramana, who holds a Master’s degree in advance mathematics from a university in Malaysia, said that the Avera scooters would have enough power to drive up to 250km on a single charge.
“The scooters we are supplying to the B2B segment offer rides of between 180—250km with speeds of up to 90km per hour. We have supplied the scooters to an ecommerce company involved in food delivery. The e-commerce company is using our scooters in Hyderabad and Bengaluru,” he said.
Ramana said Avera expected to launch the scooters in AP by December. “We were waiting for a notification on subsidies provided by the Department of Heavy Industries of the central government. The notification came a few days ago. The DHI offers a subsidy of between Rs 29,000—Rs 38,000 based the density of the battery we install in our scooters,” Ramana said.
Source: timesofindia.indiatimes
