Future of Mobility – A Bharat Innovation Fund Perspective

#News(General) [ via IoTForIndiaGroup ]

Increasingly sophisticated on-board electronics, new powertrain technologies and advances in materials science have brought connected, autonomous vehicles from science fiction on to the cusp of mainstream reality
Cut through all visions of hype curves and utopian or dystopian futures, and allow this phrase, “shared, autonomous and electric vehicles”, to sink in for a moment. The convergence of these three parameters that is unfolding today promises to address major hurdles to the adoption of sustainable transport. At the Bharat Innovation Fund, we are closely watching the intersections of each of these three trends, to understand the competition and co-operation dynamics in emerging business segments.

One of the barriers for passenger-vehicle electrification is that private vehicles are a lousy asset – they depreciate, they spend over 90 per cent of their lifetime in storage (parking), and it isn’t straightforward to predict where and when consumers will need to charge. While operating expenses for EVs are dramatically lower than for traditional vehicles, it is difficult to create a return on their higher capital costs with such a low average utilisation. Dropping costs of energy storage and electric powertrains is one answer to this problem. On the other hand, shared mobility and technology-enabled multimodal transit are increasingly becoming the norm in urban areas and are boosting vehicle capacity utilisation.

With the spread of enabling infrastructure, like charging stations and battery swap facilities, we can only expect electrification of India’s automobile fleet to gather pace. Light commercial vehicles, with higher utilisation and more predictable charging needs (can be optimised out of local delivery hubs) are understandably seeing early interest from companies attacking the electrification problem.

We believe there is substantial room for breakthrough startups throughout portions of the autonomy technology stack, from telematics to electronic component makers catering to the increasing demand for sensing, vision, imaging and condition monitoring.
How we ‘consume’ mobility – how we move people and goods – is on the verge of tremendous changes. It is an exciting time to be a venture capital fund with an eye on the transportation space, and we look forward to sharing our learnings along our journey.

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