An electric three-wheeler will be launched in India that can be charged from 0% to 100% in 15 minutes. The launch of the new EV, a collaboration between automaker Omega Seiki Mobility and battery technology startup Exponent Energy, comes amid India’s ambition to electrify 80% of all three-wheelers by 2030 as part of efforts to reduce emissions.
The new three-wheeler, called Stream City Qik, was launched on Friday priced at $3,900 (324,999 Indian rupees) and will go on sale in Delhi and Bengaluru from May 15. This variant of the previous Omega Stream City is powered by a proprietary 8.8 kWh battery pack, giving it a driving range of over 126 km (86 miles). The product is equipped with Exponent Energy’s charging technology, which the startup claims can fully charge the battery in 15 minutes when connected to the startup’s charging station (also known as an e^pump).
Currently, Exponent Energy has 60 charging stations across six cities – Delhi-NCR, Bengaluru, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Kolkata and Hyderabad. According to the company, it plans to set up 100 charging stations in Delhi-NCR and Bengaluru in 2024 and have a total of 1,000 charging stations by 2025, all of which will be available to drivers in Stream City Qik.
The partnership marks ExComponent Energy’s expansion into new areas as the Bengaluru-based startup had previously only offered fast charging technology for three-wheelers in cargo and fleet operations. The passenger three-wheeler segment in India is more than four times the number of cargo three-wheelers, according to government data. The segment grew by over 43% with over 45,000 three-wheelers sold in January alone.
Tricycles are popular with gig workers in India who use them to transport passengers and deliver packages. The Indian government has been encouraging companies to accelerate manufacturing of electric three-wheelers and providing sales subsidies to attract customers.
The partnership between Exponent Energy and Omega Seiki builds on previous partnerships. In 2022, ExComponent partnered with Reliance Industries-backed Altigreen and Montra Electric, owned by Indian conglomerate Murugappa Group, to launch cargo three-wheelers with fast charging technology. The startup has also partnered with Magenta Mobility and Fyn Mobility, both funded by Morgan Stanley and BP Ventures, to offer fast charging for vehicles. Currently, more than 1,000 vehicles are equipped with Exponent Energy’s technology, having completed over 100,000 charging sessions, and the startup aims to grow to 25,000 vehicles by 2025.
“We started with cargo to prove the technology,” Arun Vinayak, co-founder and CEO of Expont Energy, told TechCrunch in an interview. “As we scaled up, we realized that individual drivers really like fast charging because they can’t charge their vehicles at home. And they want to run more kilometers. They have to keep running, keep going wherever the demand is, and go wherever the passengers need to go.”
Exponent Energy and Omega Seiki Mobility have been running close controller pilots over the past few months to test consumer behavior. They found that three-wheelers carrying up to three passengers sometimes run for up to 22 hours a day, with two drivers sequentially using these three-wheelers for intra-city needs. This makes it important for three-wheeler passengers to have access to fast charging. Another alternative to fast charging in this case could be battery replacement, but this doesn’t work on a large scale, according to Vinayak.
“If you don’t charge your replacement battery quickly, it will run out. And because this is a replaceable battery, the battery size is limited and the operating range is also quite limited,” he said.
The technology behind three-wheeler upgrades
Exponent Energy’s battery technology includes lithium-ion batteries with its own battery management system that monitors every cell in real time as it charges. The startup also has its own charging stations that use an off-board thermal management system that delivers coolant through the charging plug. This helps maintain the temperature of all battery cells during charging and allows for a 0-100% charge in just 15 minutes with a 3,000 cycle lifetime warranty.
Vinayak told TechCrunch that ExComponent Energy’s charging stations can charge 20 to 30 vehicles per day, providing 10x efficiency, while other EV charging stations typically charge two vehicles. Similarly, the cost of installing an Expont charging station is nearly $6,000 (about 500,000 Indian rupees), while a CNG station costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. This has limited the availability of CNG to around 60 charging stations in Bengaluru, while Exponent Energy already has 40 stations in the city, the executive said.
Image Credits: Omega Seiki Mobility
“If you give people the ability to refuel very quickly, the ability to recharge very quickly, and a reliable, dense network, people really don’t care about the range,” he said.
Stream City Qik will initially launch in Delhi and Bengaluru, with plans to roll out to new cities later this year. Omega Seiki Mobility is also optimistic about taking its fast-charging three-wheeler to markets outside India once it gains enough traction.
“I can open markets all over the world. “We are testing across Southeast Asia, Bangladesh and Africa.” Uday Narang, founder and chairman of Omega Seiki Mobility, told TechCrunch.
New Delhi-based Omega Seiki Mobility has a production capacity of 20,000 vehicles per year and has three plants in northern India and one in the eastern state of Jharkhand. Exponent Energy, on the other hand, has the capacity to build 500 charging units per month and plans to increase this to 3,000 by July and August.
The Stream City Qik is priced competitively with other electric and gas-powered three-wheelers in the Indian market at $3,900 (324,999 Indian Rupees). Vinayak and Narang said they wanted to eradicate charging anxiety among three-wheeler drivers and help them increase their monthly income by up to 30%, rather than winning the price war.
Founded in 2020, Exponent Energy counts Eight Roads Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and TDK Ventures as lead investors and has raised $44.4 million to date. The startup generated annual recurring revenue of $6 million in 2023 and aims to reach about $72 million by 2025. It also plans to deploy its charging technology on electric buses in India later this year.