• Home
  • EV News
  • EV Blogs
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Vehicles
    • Sales
    • Electric Cars
    • Tata Electric Cars
    • OLA Electric
    • Power Electric Scooters
    • Economy Scooters
    • Electric Cycles
    • Electric MotorCycles
    • Electric Cargo Vehicles
    • Campus Vehicles
  • Categories
    • Community Charging
    • Buyer's Guides
    • Real Life EV Stories
    • How To Guides
    • EV Test Reports
    • EV Travelogues
    • EV Conversions
    • Events
    • Educate
  • About Us
  • Community
    • Discord
    • Forums
PluginIndia Electric Vehicles

Are you up for the EV Challenge?

11/7/2015

7 Comments

 
By Johnson
Lovely Professional University, Phagwara‎, Punjab, India had organized the electric bike racing challenge earlier and is now organizing the Indo Asian Solar Challenge (IASC) 2016. These are great platforms for the students of the university to exhibit their skill and knowledge. This also helps in getting experience in wining potential investors or venture capitalist.
The university has also made good effort for publicity and providing a prize money (Rs 100,000 to 500,000) as an incentive for the winners. 
Today i'm asking some soul searching questions both to the students and the faculty. With all respect, please note that i'm not complaining about LPU nor about the students but just asking if we could all together improve the already set standards.
Not to follow how the solar races happen elsewhere in the world, but to set our own standards which other International colleges would want to meet?


There have been such projects and vehicles built by a number of students across the country but they never pursue it further to get it converted into production vehicles. These project files gets filed in some corner of the university to be superseded next year by more of similar projects. Are you one of those who will be competing or have you competed in such an electric vehicle challenges? Or are you part of the university organizing these challenges? If yes, I have some questions for you. We would love to hear your thoughts. 
What problems are they solving?
What are our universities teaching these students to solve? Or are the students just going through the paces!!?
Or are we just creating students that will work in 'Automobile Factories' albeit in better or probably managerial positions?
Would our engineers ever create something of their own? Or even how will the vehicles perform in a crash?


Where are technical specs, data, images & videos?
The University or the student doesn’t preserve any data online of their vehicle other than the spec. There is no data available for the outsider on how each vehicle performs. Example - top speed or range etc. They have many other handling tests which we believe are rather secondary. The main goal of an electric vehicle is always speed and range, next  is their USE-ABILITY IN REAL WORLD and the rest hardly matters. Another thing I found very sad is that the students have about 5 or 6 pics about the vehicle they build and probably no video. It is obvious they are not consumed or moved or interested by the project they are building. Perhaps they are too busy with the task at hand. But for heaven’s sake this might be the only vehicle they might build in their entire lifetime. Get the data on record and at least 100 pics and 10 in-depth videos of the goddamn thing before it gets dismantled!
A good example of describing the vehicle is shown here by the students.
A good example of describing the vehicle is shown here by the students. This is something our kids should do more often.

What is the marketing ability?
Marketing is that ability to push/showcase/project  your product. Even though you have ability and idea it still requires that extra marketing ability to showcase the product. The best example being the coolest cooler which got kickstarted.
Videos and Pics are great to tools to publicize your products/works especially in the social media infested world, this would have been 10,000 times hard say 10 yrs ago.
On example is the way the experiments are promoted using youtube videos.  
On the left below is LPU video and on the right is university of Michigan video. See the difference, unlike the LPU’s video the University of Michigan video stands apart. We are talking about just the video we will not get into the vehicles.
Both the Students and the University should have their own youtube channel where the students can upload their everyday adventure of building their vehicle. Next year's students could learn from this and even better the quality. Else everybody would keep making the same mistakes. This will teach them how to market/promote/advertise their vehicle. These videos will also act as advertisement for the University if they are well made. So instead of the University taking effort to create server space and upload videos the students can themselves take the advantage of sites like YouTube to upload their own videos and promote it and people can be encouraged to vote and on the final day the most "liked" video could also be given a prize.

Do they believe?
Do the Indian Engineering students believe in their vehicle at all? Or do the students just build the vehicle for the sake of competition? Do they think that they or anyone else will be able to use this vehicle every day? If no, why not? So why can they not build something that people can use? One that will be safe and within the motor laws of the country? Something they will be able to sell in the market. Now building such a vehicle is called INNOVATION. Not building some crude vehicle to win some challenge? Why would any venture capitalist fund any vehicle that looks worse, cost more and carry lesser people than the Chinese e-rickshaws? The students should be learning to build vehicles that will sell rather than just building a random vehicle to win the competition but which will be of no use outside the arena.

Chetan Maini is the only person in India who went on to create and sell electric cars… not only in India but also the world when electric cars were not cool. He did it because he believed that it is possible. 1 person in 1 billion!
Ather Energy is another group that were successful in getting venture funding, which is because they believed. But what if they had not got funding? Most of the incubation period is 2 years but what if no funding came their way? With the kind of vehicles most students build they wouldn’t get any funding in the first place. But what about their belief in their ability to build and sell a vehicle or at least to use it in real life?

One student asked me “Is there any future for such vehicles?”. Doesn’t the student know? If he didn’t believe then why did he waste his time in building it. In the presentation he must have said that this vehicle and fuel is the future of automobiles. No?

Some photos from the LPU Uni's Indo Asian Solar Challenge (IASC) 2016
Picture
Picture

The NEXT STEP
Students should be encouraged to take the next step forward of that step of building a product that is sell-able.
The future has only 2 ways either bootstrap or go find a venture capitalist.
Bootstrap or Venture Cap? 
If you have an idea the best way to give it away is to find a venture capitalist. Bootstrapping means using your shoestring budget to develop and sell your product. This could take a long time in the initial years maybe during the development the entire product could undergo metamorphosis and turn into something different.

Bootstrapping vehicle manufacturing would seem like a daunting task and expensive. But ways should be found to keep the cost low. Thus Building a 50K vehicle limit would be much better than a 100k vehicle. Crowd funding could be experimented within the college premises itself. Its easy to market anything today with social media. The students have a much higher advantage over many established companies in such aspect.

VC's are people who usually invest to make profit on their investment. The best thing about VC's are they are willing to give you the money. The worst thing with VC's want their money back. This could put immense pressure especially if the product is not selling. If they see that their investment is under threat they could remove you from the company. With VCs' you take money promising them a profit after a certain stage and once the stage is passed you are in for a lot of pressure and trouble. With a VC you might even be arm twisted into making decisions you wouldn’t have taken otherwise. Most of the time you and your co-founder would have the same vision and understanding of the market but the venture capitalist would not be tuned into your frequency and since most business in its infancy deals with intuition it would be very difficult to convince a venture capitalist about your view. This is especially true in electric vehicles where a petrol car can go up to 1000 kms on a full tank while an electric car can only reach 120 kms at full charge. It’s very difficult to convince that EV's can be better than Petrol car. The VCs might think development of a car is more the demand than development of a bike, or they might think the development of a faster car (80 to 100 kmph) would be the need of the hour than development of a slower car (25 to 30 kmph).
Did i just say a 30 kmph CAR? Some VC just took out a gun to shoot us as did some readers.
But you could drive a 30 kmph car on the road without requiring registration or license (DRIVING LICENSE would be a great help though) just like a bullock-cart doesn't. But if you develop a faster vehicle you can just keep it in your garage without being able to take it out on the road. Selling Pepsi is not the same as selling Apple Computers as John Sculley realized and with electric vehicles are exactly like that. Its not the same as selling petrol cars, the principles that work there doesn't work here.

But the advantage of VC's are that you get good visibility and publicity. The big investment ensure you have enough money for advertising and hiring the best in the business. But still with this publicity & advertisement you are unable to reach targeted sales figures within the 1st year then the going might enter turbulent waters.

So if you are one such engineering student who will be competing in electric vehicle competitions or if you an engineering faculty who will be inspecting or judging such a competitions keep in mind that YOU ARE ONE OF THE KEY
on how “Make In India” unfolds
. The government might or might not give 101 incentives but if you cannot USE/SELL what you make whether In India or anywhere in the world, then you have to revise and upgrade your standards.
So let it be written… so let it be done…
7 Comments
Sagar Mehra
11/7/2015 07:37:28 am

Very good blog that students who are working on a project must read.
Thanks for writing this.

Reply
Mohindar Gandhi
11/7/2015 09:32:13 am

I understand what you are trying to say. And it is important for students to improve the presentation, quality and data sharing.
But to expect students to come up with production vehicles is unfair.
Vehicle manufacturing is a capital intensive business and involves lots of RnD.
its virtually not possible to get production ready vehicles from these projects.

Reply
Johnson
12/7/2015 09:19:34 am

Thanks for your response Sagar Mehra & Mohindar Gandhi its always nice to get the interaction and know your thoughts...

@ MG True. But the vehicle need not be like production vehicles. At the same time the existing vehicles being built are also not too good. But great care must be taken by the students in the look of the vehicle... after all that will be how it will play out in real life.

We all have to think beyond the hump ahead on the road... to build vehicles which... at least can be used in everyday life. I accept that is not easy at all... therein lies the challenge...

Forget engineering... even in our Arts & Crafts subjects in school we do not make things that we use in our every day life... things like making caps, shoes, or bags, or making wooden toys...etc. This is one of the biggest reason the kids cannot improve the finished look of the vehicles. We have to get out of this rut... sooner the better...

India has a good chance to develop a variety of EVs and even dominate the World EV scene. Batteries will become cheaper over the next 10 years like never before in history. Even as a car manufacturing country we are moving to the top 3. We can only become No1 only if we have bigger and betters goals than others.

also EVs can vary and some vehicles can be built for Industries to be used within the factories, Malls,Tourist resorts, ATV-Sports, some for local use, some for farm sectors not all EVs have to do 120kmph. We can have solar/Electric buses to ply in remote rural areas... and in areas where petrol/diesel vehicles would not be profitable.

We can create all this... or let it all pass us by... it is only possible if our standards are better than existing International Standards.

Reply
Johnson
13/7/2015 04:48:22 am

At the same time ALL the Electric Motorcycles that featured E-bike race in the video were very good... very good is an understatement... they were excellent.... even better than what is currently available in the market... as production vehicles...

Reply
Johnson
14/7/2015 05:48:13 am

The potential of EV today is exactly how the potential of computers were during the times of Steve Jobs & Steve Wozniak.... everybody knows that with Apple LOOKS play a major part in attracting the customers... read about the buzz their colour screens made

Many people do not know that all Apple II of 1970 had RCA (Yellow, White & Red) connectors which we (non Apple users) became familiar only with the advent of CD/DVD Players, Handy-cams and LCDs.
Apple II came with various add on video output cards.
Apple II came with various ports to connect various equipments.

These features solved a lot of problem and made life easy for different kinds of people... not necessarily wordprocessing or spreadsheet users... but users like Desktop publishing and video editing people benefited which Apple founders did not consider as potential users until much later.

The problem with E2O is that it addresses the problems of a very narrow group of people, in a very tiny area of the country and were not aware how to solve the lack of infrastructure problem... on top of that in 10 yrs the vehicle has stayed almost the same in size although it became more expensive with Lithium batteries. Reva could have gone into e-motorbikes, e-ATVs, e-Autorickshaws. Its really hard and sad to see that Reva lost the advantage at home in electric rickshaws to Chinese who have managed to sell around 2,000,000 ricks in India. Another problem I feel is that Mahindra stuck to Lithium instead of giving the option to the public by offering both versions of the vehicle.

Along with the look the main issue is... Are we making vehicles that will be of use to somebody or solving some problem?
Can we make EVs to solve the local transportation problem... of Kids going to school? Of people going to work? Of mobility of local businesses?.. of the Hawker with his pushcart? of the Farmer with his farm equipment?... If there is no charging infrastructure in our area can we think of ways to develop infrastructure without depending upon the government?...etc

Reply
business analytics syllabus link
8/5/2020 03:15:31 pm

Sharda University rustic social insurance camps contact the lives of individuals in remote towns and secluded networks in and around NCR. Sharda University offers a far reaching bundle of clinical administrations to the network. The activities against HIV/AIDS are a piece of Sharda University wide range of wellbeing and government assistance programs for the network.

Reply
best essay services reviews link
4/6/2022 05:12:12 pm

As a result, before employing any best essay writing service provider, consider the following factors.

Reply

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Categories

    All
    Ask Your EV Guru
    Blogs From Heart & Soul
    Buyers Guides
    Charging Stations
    Clean Energy
    Commercial Vehicles
    Community Initiatives
    Conversion Kits
    Electric Bikes
    Electric Bus
    Electric Cars
    Electric MotorCycles
    Electric Scooters
    Events
    EV Expos & Exhibitions
    EV Industry News
    EV Sales
    EV Technology
    EV Travelogues
    How To Guides
    Interviews
    Podcasts
    RE:LIVE Events
    Student Projects
    Surveys

    Archives

    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013

    RSS Feed

Plug in india

About us
Advertise with us
Contact us

Privacy Policy
Terms of Service

Support US

Get access to exclusive perks
  • Become a YouTube member
  • Become a Patreon

Subscribe to our newsletter

© COPYRIGHT 2019. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
  • Home
  • EV News
  • EV Blogs
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Vehicles
    • Sales
    • Electric Cars
    • Tata Electric Cars
    • OLA Electric
    • Power Electric Scooters
    • Economy Scooters
    • Electric Cycles
    • Electric MotorCycles
    • Electric Cargo Vehicles
    • Campus Vehicles
  • Categories
    • Community Charging
    • Buyer's Guides
    • Real Life EV Stories
    • How To Guides
    • EV Test Reports
    • EV Travelogues
    • EV Conversions
    • Events
    • Educate
  • About Us
  • Community
    • Discord
    • Forums