Orxa Energies's Mission is to Rapidly Electrify All Transport. To do that they are working on made in India, modular battery packs. They are also working on an electric motorcycle to be released in 2019.
Let's chat with the co-founder of Orxa Energies, Ranjita Ravi to find out more.
Let's chat with the co-founder of Orxa Energies, Ranjita Ravi to find out more.
Please give an introduction to Orxa Energies, to our viewers. What is your vision behind creating the company?
When we started off, we just wanted a performance electric motorcycle. We looked around and found no such motorcycle in market – internationally, few players existed like Zero Motorcycles. As we spoke to riders, we realized that both performance & range were critical. You can say that we started Orxa Energies because we were searching for an electric motorcycle that WE wanted to ride but found none. And what better way to do so than build one ourselves!
As we started building & testing our prototypes, we realized that the “energy solution” piece of the puzzle remains unanswered. Hence, we decided to take our battery packs to market. These packs have a greater power output, at lower weights, with advanced, proprietary thermal management – multiple patents have already been filed around our tech. Our Automotive packs are “Off the Shelf”, swap-ready, & modular. These battery packs are now clocking fast growing sales, with customer pilots in execution.
In a way, you can say that we’re solving each problem of the EV value chain sequentially; and offering each solution as an offering to our clients.
Our vision is to rapidly electrify all transport. Plain & simple as that.
Tell us about the Mantis electric motorcycle.
Our first vehicle is the Mantis. Just like it's namesake, the Mantis is a stealthy ambush predator. Designed as an early-performance Street bike, it has a top speed of 140+ kmph and a range of ~200kms per charge.
For our users, the Mantis motorcycle will be among the earliest entrants into the performance electric category. Design, Ride-pleasure and Performance is what we are working to deliver. We want to provide a credible electric alternative to petrol motorcycles for serious bikers.
The speeds and range will allow our riders to be comfortable on all types of city roads and on highways, while the battery-swap option opens up the scope of electric biking to a whole new level.
When we started off, we just wanted a performance electric motorcycle. We looked around and found no such motorcycle in market – internationally, few players existed like Zero Motorcycles. As we spoke to riders, we realized that both performance & range were critical. You can say that we started Orxa Energies because we were searching for an electric motorcycle that WE wanted to ride but found none. And what better way to do so than build one ourselves!
As we started building & testing our prototypes, we realized that the “energy solution” piece of the puzzle remains unanswered. Hence, we decided to take our battery packs to market. These packs have a greater power output, at lower weights, with advanced, proprietary thermal management – multiple patents have already been filed around our tech. Our Automotive packs are “Off the Shelf”, swap-ready, & modular. These battery packs are now clocking fast growing sales, with customer pilots in execution.
In a way, you can say that we’re solving each problem of the EV value chain sequentially; and offering each solution as an offering to our clients.
Our vision is to rapidly electrify all transport. Plain & simple as that.
Tell us about the Mantis electric motorcycle.
Our first vehicle is the Mantis. Just like it's namesake, the Mantis is a stealthy ambush predator. Designed as an early-performance Street bike, it has a top speed of 140+ kmph and a range of ~200kms per charge.
For our users, the Mantis motorcycle will be among the earliest entrants into the performance electric category. Design, Ride-pleasure and Performance is what we are working to deliver. We want to provide a credible electric alternative to petrol motorcycles for serious bikers.
The speeds and range will allow our riders to be comfortable on all types of city roads and on highways, while the battery-swap option opens up the scope of electric biking to a whole new level.
We see from your explainer video, that the Mantis will use small sized modular battery packs which have to be removed and charged. Also we see that Orxa has ideas to create Battery Swap Stations.
Our issues with this idea are
- Your battery packs are built for Orxa Bikes and Trikes only, other EV’s cant use these stations, thus making them a closed platform, while we believe in open EV ‘charging.
- Battery Swap stations are expensive to build and maintain.
At Orxa, we are strong advocates of Battery Swap, to tackle biases of up-front cost, range anxiety and charge time & charging space (parking space). We believe that battery swap is a win-win for rapid electrification of 2W and 3W transport- especially shared mobility in India, where minimal vehicle down time is a critical factor.
Our Automotive packs are "Off the Shelf", swap-ready, & modular. They are stackable. They are currently in pilots in different vehicle formats.
"Battery Swap" is essential for shared mobility players & fleet operators to convert to electric. This is because of their down-time & cost constraints:
They can’t afford to have their fleet off the roads for the time of the charging.
Nor can they afford the high up-front cost of a large enough battery pack that can sustain hundreds of kilometres a day.
Fast charging is not a financially viable solution because of the degradation that battery packs undergo, reducing the number of usable lifecycles, & hence the total cost goes up.
And fleet operators & shared mobility players will be the first to electrify because of the low operational costs of EVs & high daily mileage that the fleet vehicles put in; making EV's financially viable, (if above 2 conditions are taken care of)
Are you creating an electric trike too? Why a trike?
The Mantis will be available as both a bike & a reverse-trike. A reverse-trike format is unique and is more stable than a normal bike. Our proprietary tech around the mechanism allow for the same footprint as a normal bike.
When do you expect to launch these products on sale to individuals and businesses?
We expect to launch the Mantis motorcycles by late 2019-early 2020.
Our battery products are already in sales for Automotive, Aerospace & other use cases.
Reference
- Orxa Energies Blog: https://medium.com/orxa-energies
- Yourstory Article published in Feb 2019: http://bit.ly/Orxa-Mantis
- Orxa Energies YouTube page with some videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/OrxaEnergiesPvtLtd
- Orxa Energies Social media pages for more recent news: Facebook , Twitter, Linkedin
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