[ravi_b]

Hi HN, we're Ravi and Pratik of Enerjazz (https://www.enerjazz.tech/). We make battery swapping stations (like gasoline stations) for electric vehicles, swapping discharged batteries with charged batteries in 2 minutes for light commercial EVs.

Commercial EVs or electric rickshaws have 2 pain points. One high upfront cost of battery (can be up to 50% of the total cost of vehicle). Two, high charging downtime resulting in loss of revenue.

While working as an analyst covering renewable energy developments at Shell, I (Ravi) came to the conclusion that anything that makes energy storage more affordable will have the most impact in the next couple of decades. That simple thought is how the idea of Enerjazz was born. Pratik is an expert in lithium-ion batteries (PhD from German aerospace center). In 2017, we moved from Europe to India to work on developing a battery for storing solar energy.

One day, we were walking back to our office after having lunch at a restaurant. We saw an e-rickshaw get on a footpath and drive into a narrow lane. We followed the driver and found that there were more than 20 e-rickshaws charging there in an open area. All of those e-rickshaws had lead acid batteries. On talking to the drivers, we realized the pain they had was far greater than the pain of storing solar energy. We started talking to e-rickshaw drivers every day after lunch and decided to do something about it. We started with making affordable lithium-ion batteries for e-rickshaws. Since we joined YC in June, we have done more than 2,500 battery swaps.

We enable e-rickshaw drivers to increase their earnings by 80% because their downtime effectively becomes zero. We require just a 70 dollar refundable deposit (cheaper than lead acid battery) for e-rickshaw drivers. We also have a patent-pending technology that reduces the cost of lithium-ion batteries by 50%. The technology is already proven as Enerjazz batteries have completed 4M+ kilometers.

We look forward to your feedback!

[jeswin]

Good idea, and extra credits for not being another software and services platform. India needs more companies who actually build/manufacture, will be rooting for you.

[ravi_b]

Thank you so much. Unlike a traditional manufacturing company, we are going to be asset light though which will enable us to grow fast.

We started Enerjazz with the simple goal of solving our customer's problems. We kept talking to customers just like what YC recommends. After living for many years in Amsterdam, I often had to go to many e-rickshaw driver houses in renowned ghettos (godforsaken places) of Noida to fix their chargers in the early days. This is because they did not have proper charging infrastructure and their chargers will often go bad. With swapping, we also address this issue of bad quality power access to e-rickshaw drivers.

[thoughtstheseus]

Super cool! I’m always super skeptical of people claiming battery improvements. Is the benefit more of the lithium ion to lead acid switch? Or swapping batteries between use? Keep up the good work. I’d love to see videos of the e-Rick shaws.

[ravi_b]

You mean another start-up by another professor in another university on another battery chemistry :). we get that a lot. You are spot on. Almost 96% of 2M e-rickshaws in India still run on lead acid battery (because of lower upfront cost). The only way to switch them to better tech (lithium-ion) is by making it more affordable for them.

[uranium]

Yeah, everything here sounds great except for "We also have a patent-pending technology that reduces the cost of lithium-ion batteries by 50%." That's a huge claim, which would immediately be many times more valuable than your swapping business. Is this cost reduction perhaps just vs. small-volume retail prices, in India, for specific battery formats, or some other reasonable limitation?

[ravi_b]

Even with half cost, we are more expensive than lead acid batteries. Typically lithium ion batteries are three times in price compared to lead acid batteries. Erickshaw drivers are very cost sensitive to upfront battery cost. We wanted to give them the most affordable battery solution.

[uranium]

Sure, but if you can reduce the cost of lithium-ion batteries by 50% in general, why are you not just licensing that technology to Tesla and others for gigabucks? Or is your cost reduction quite specific to the batteries that eRickshaw drivers need for some reason?

[ravi_b]

We will get into electric scooters soon. Focussed on commercial delivery scooter (like for Zomato and swiggy) initially.

[downvote_korok]

Very good idea. Are you operating in the northeast part of india (Assam). I am from barpeta (781301) a small town in assam, india. Here charging is a big problem the ASEB electricity supply is not reliable. We sometime can not operate for battery. enerjazz can change our life.

[ravi_b]

Thank you. We are currently not in Assam. From what I understand, Assam has a decently good density of erickshaws as well. A couple of our employees come from there. We would love to launch there.

[roshansingh]

Very cool. Are you working with electric scooters as well? Ola recently launched electric scooters and have heard that the battery is not swappable on that.

[ravi_b]

Thank you so much. We are only working with e-rickshaws at the moment but plan to take the model to electric scooters (Zomato/Swiggy delivery fleets) soon. We believe commercial EVs will be the first ones to adopt swapping because they loose revenue when they have to charge in the day time.

[uranium]

$70 < [cost of lead-acid battery] < [cost of lithium-ion battery], so how often does a customer trade the deposit for a battery?

[ravi_b]

$70 is a refundable deposit they give us when they join us. They pay us per swap. We sometimes get customers who had their lead acid batteries stolen and who now have no money to buy a new battery. With us they pay as they earn.

[uranium]

What I was getting at was, if $70 is a lot less than a lithium-ion battery costs, do people just steal the batteries and give up the $70?

[ravi_b]

Great point. If erickshaw drivers steal the battery, we can remotely lock the battery. So these batteries will not charge or discharge and will essentially become useless. We also take documents (similar to social security in the us) from each customer before we onboard them.

[uranium]

Ah, that makes sense. Thanks.

[shayankh]

super amazing! as they say in south asia, mashallah!

i'm from pakistan, doing a phd in germany, back in pakistan we don't even have e-rickshaws. but godspeed to our indian brethren.

[ravi_b]

We got a lot of request from Nepal. There are hilly terrains there and batteries don't last many kilometers. We know Bangladesh has a lot of erickshaw as well. It will only be a matter of time that e-rickshaws are there in Pakistan. We started in Delhi because it is one of the most polluted cities in the world. 22 of the 30 most polluted cities are in South Asia.