1. MG India forges partnership for EV charging and battery recycling.

MG India has joined hands with Epsilon Group for EV charging & battery recycling solutions. Epsilon’s battery recycling arm LICO will provide battery disposal & second-life solutions. The company will aid MG India in meeting ‘Extended Producer Responsibility’ (EPR) obligations by providing battery recycling & certification services. LICO has expertise in battery lifecycle management. This includes the recycling end-of-life batteries to recover valuable metals like lithium & cobalt.

Epsilon’s EV charging arm 'Power EV' will provide customized charging solutions for MG. Under the automaker’s ‘MG Charge’ initiative, 1000 EV charging points will be installed in residential societies & apartments across India. Power EV will supply EV chargers for this.

2. Ashok Leyland’s EV arm Switch Mobility to deliver 2500 EVs to MoEVing.

Switch Mobility, the EV arm of Ashok Leyland, has signed an agreement with EV fleet company MoEVing, to deliver 2500 Switch leV4 vehicles. It recently delivered the first batch of these EVs:

The Switch IeV4 is an electric light commercial vehicle (eLCV), which comes with a 32.2 kWh battery pack. It offers a range of 120 km. The battery takes 8 hours to fully charge using a 3.3 kW charger and 75 minutes via a 30 kW DC charger. The EV has a payload capacity of 1700 kg.

3. UEI Alliance to facilitate transaction interoperability across multiple EV charging networks.

India’s 20 prominent companies have come together to create the Unified Energy Interface (UEI) Alliance. This network has been inspired by the success of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), and aims to make EV charging more convenient by facilitating seamless payment & transaction interoperability across multiple charging networks. The UEI Alliance has members such as ChargeZone, Pulse Energy, Kazam, Trinity, Sheru, etc and these companies will integrate their systems with the UEI network, thereby allowing EV users to discover & utilize EV charging stations, irrespective of the company.

The establishment of UEI is expected to revolutionize India’s electric vehicle sector by simplifying access to a widespread charging infrastructure. After this, EV users won’t require multiple accounts to access chargers of different companies. The UEI Alliance has committed to a not-for-profit model. It has already facilitated 1.4 GWh of energy transactions and the alliance is expected to expand significantly as more B2C players come onboard.

4. Electric bicycle startup EMotorad makes two big announcements.

Electric bicycle company EMotorad has announced bringing cricketer MS Dhoni onboard as a brand ambassador and also as an investor!

The startup has also announced an extraordinary growth rate of 370% during FY24. In November 2023, the company had secured Rs 164 crore in Series B funding from Panthera Growth Partners. This funding has been instrumental in expanding EMotorad’s manufacturing capacity. The company now commands around 60% of the country’s electric bicycle market share.

5. Amazon becomes the largest private EV charging operator in the United States.

E-commerce giant Amazon, which operates a fleet of around 13,500 electric delivery vans in the United States, is now the country’s largest private EV charging operator! Amazon has set-up a widespread EV charging network at its warehouses across the US.

Amazon has set-up 17,000 EV chargers at 120 warehouses over a period of two years. The image below shows an Amazon warehouse where a contractor has installed multiple EV charging points:

The electric delivery vans have been manufactured for Amazon by Rivian, which initially made these exclusively for Amazon. Now this ‘exclusivity agreement’ has expired and Rivian has made these delivery vans available for other players as well.

For complete EV charging solutions, explore the Kazam website.