A 14,000 km road trip to promote electric vehicles

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: Startupnrev, a collaboration of two riders, John Kuruvilla and Gautam Khot from Brigade REAP and four Indian startups including Orxa Energies, SpareIt, Pothole Raja and Charzer, have planned ‘Electric- BharatMala’ – a 14,216-kilometre ride using electric bikes and it will cover 24 states.

The proposed ride’s route will cover Arabian Sea coast towards Kanyakumari, and up the coast of the Bay of Bengal to West Bengal, and onward to North East India proceeding to touch the crown of India along the foothills of Himalayas. They will then proceed towards the Rann of Kutch, the Gulf of Khambhat and Goa, before taking the Western Ghats back to Bengaluru. This ride would break the current world record for longest ride on an EV motorcycle (12,379 km).

The rider duo will ride The Mantis EV motorcycle from Oxra Energies. The support team will be led by Pothole Raja, who will ensure a smooth ride for the team by fixing over 1000 potholes on the proposed route, while Charzer, India’s largest network of EV charging stations, will take care of the charging of the motorcycles and SpareIT will provide its service network and EV-ready spares.

Explaining the objective of the ride, John Kuruvilla, Electric-BharatMala Rider and Mentor Brigade REAP said, “The focus of this ride is three-fold. Firstly, we want to remove anxiety with regard to electric vehicles in terms of range, performance, servicing and charging. Secondly, we want to use this ride to promote road safety by demonstrating the use of recycled plastic waste to fix potholes and most importantly we want to use this ride to encourage students in over 25 colleges and universities, along the way, to become job creators rather than job seekers. We will be presenting to these students the amazing stories of the #MadeInIndia startups that are accompanying us on this ride.”

Dr Prajwal Sabnis, founder, Orxa energies, the maker of Mantis, said they have invested over four years to design a high performance EV street motorcycle guaranteeing a power packed riding experience. It has a top speed of 140 km/hr with an estimated range of 200 km on a single charge and uses battery swap technology.

“We will have a pilot vehicle and a chase vehicle which will be carrying spares, batteries and also material for road safety demonstrations and pothole fixing en route. The trip will have 54 touch points including Mangaluru, Ernakulam, Kanyakumari, Chennai, Ongole, Puri, Jamshedpur, Ranchi, Kolkata, Darjeeling, Guwahati, Gorakpur, Nainital, Dehradun, Shimla, Leh, Srinagar, Jammu, Amritsar, Bikaner, Udaipur, Jamnagar, Porbander, Bhavnagar, Surat, Mumbai and Goa, before returning to Bengaluru. We expect the mountainous and desert terrains with its low and high temperatures to test both rider endurance and EV motorcycle reliability,” said Gautam Khot, Electric-BharatMala rider and Mentor Brigade REAP.

Another important aspect that bothers the customers is the aftersales service and spares network. Which is where SpareIt, another EV focused startup that is setting up an EV equipped & trained service network pan India. Both Charzer and SpareIt are providing the necessary Infrastructure for this Bharat Mala journey.

The pilot run is scheduled on January 8 to Mangaluru – Alva’s College where the team will address Students at the college to Startup and become Job Creators instead of Job seekers.