Chetan Maini-led Sun Mobilty and ride hailing application Uber Technologies on Wednesday announced their partnership to deploy electric three-wheelers across select cities in India.
As part of the arrangement, Sun Mobility will offer its energy infrastructure platform, which includes swappable smart batteries and quick interchange stations to select original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) for building electric three-wheelers. Fleet owners and Uber’s driver partners will benefit because they can buy vehicles without the battery to save money on initial acquisition costs, the companies said in a joint statement.
The availability of swappable lithium-ion batteries will reduce the overall cost of ownerships of such eco- friendly vehicles as batteries constitute almost 40% of the overall cost of an electric vehicle. Ride hailing applications like Uber and Ola have been trying to increase the share of electric vehicles on their respective platforms as the Union Government wants them to shift a significant chunk of the vehicles deployed to electric in the next few years.
“We are delighted to partner with Sun Mobility, an industry pioneer, to try to usher in a wave of electric vehicles in the mass market category. This is an important step forward in fulfilling our vision for creating a mobility ecosystem that is sustainable, provides cleaner air and helps build smarter cities across the region,” said Pradeep Parameswaran, president, Uber India.
“Our mission is to give users a cost-effective and convenient energy infrastructure solution to accelerate the adoption of EVs. Partnering with Uber, the leading global player in personal mobility, will help create a wide EV landscape at scale, that will transform the way people commute,” said Chetan Maini, co-founder and vice-chairman, Sun Mobility.
The Centre wants to promote electric two-wheelers and has provided subsidies for such vehicles under the Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Electric Vehicles (FAME) scheme. Policy think tank, NITI Aayog, is considering a policy proposal to ban all two-wheelers running on internal combustion engine under 150cc by 2025 and three-wheelers by 2023.
This article was first published on livemint.com