Host: Cody Simms
Guest: Mohit Yadav | Co-Founder & CEO | BOLT
Category: ⚡ Renewable Energy | EV Charging
Podcast’s Essential Bites:
[3:41] “At BOLT, […] we are building technologies and infrastructure that accelerate EV adoption all over. […] We are targeting […] emerging markets, where you have these millions and millions of two-wheelers that are running around. […] The majority of the solutions that have come for EVs in general, have been […] done for cars for Western markets.”
[4:23] “We build technology that can make any vehicle smart. So it's like an Android for EVs. EVs are just like computers on wheels, and people who want software based-features, like we've seen this with Tesla and cars, [can have] that in two wheelers as well. When I talk about infrastructure, […] we already have the largest peer to peer charging network in India, with more than 10,000 charging points in 100+ cities, and we are growing rapidly.”
[15:07] “When we started, we were very clear on the vision that we only wanted to build software. But no one really built the hardware for us because we're too young. […] So we built our own hardware. […] All the solutions when it comes to charging in India, they were very expensive. […] And the very interesting thing about two-wheelers is that for every car sold in India, ten two-wheelers are sold. And in a country like India, all the fuel our country uses, 70% of it is consumed by two wheelers.”
[21:51] “I think there is also a misconception that India uses a lot of coal to produce electricity. In fact, I would say the amount of electricity that is generated from renewable sources in India is close to 40%. Because there are two things our country has really invested in hydro projects […] and also the sun shines all the time. […] We have airports in Kerala that are entirely powered by solar.”
[23:43] “As a user, when you buy a BOLT charging point, you can obviously charge your own vehicle. You can set when the charger would be private, when it would be public, or it would be restricted amongst your friends, basically groups. And it's totally up to you what price you really want to set. We don't have any control over the pricing. We feel with so much ubiquity, going ahead if a charger is shipped with every bike, I think game theory will solve the pricing issues by themselves.”
[45:13] “I think what's going to be really interesting is that we have seen the traditional charge point operation business mature and in developed countries like America and Europe. We really need to see how we can create a network that is maintained by the community. How do you incentivize the shared upkeep of a network? How do you reward the early participants? […] How do you incentivize user behavior? How do you generate demand and all those things? Even in a country like Norway, where the EV infrastructure has caught up with the EV sales, the top utilization of the network is maybe 30% on a very good day.”
Rating: ⚡⚡⚡
🎙️ Full Episode: Apple | Spotify | Google (Original Title: "Startup Series: BOLT")
🕰️ 50 min | 🗓️ 07/07/2022
✅ Time saved: 48 min
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