electric vehicles
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YC-backed Statiq wants to bootstrap India’s EV charging network
Electric vehicles (EVs) are spreading throughout the world. While Tesla has drawn the most attention in the United States with its luxurious and cutting-edge cars, EVs are becoming a mainstay in markets far away from the environs of California.
Take India for instance. In the local mobility market, two- and three-wheel vehicles are starting to emerge as a popular option for a rapidly expanding middle class looking for more affordable options. EV versions are popular thanks to their reduced maintenance costs and higher reliability compared to gasoline alternatives.
Two-wheeled electric scooters are a fast-growing segment of India’s mobility market.
There’s just one problem, and it’s the same one faced by every country which has attempted to convert from gasoline to electric: how do you build out the charging station network to make these vehicles usable outside a small range from their garage?
It’s the classic chicken-and-egg problem. You need EVs in order to make money on charging stations, but you can’t afford to build charging stations until EVs are popular. Some startups have attempted to build out these networks themselves first. Perhaps the most famous example was Better Place, an Israeli startup that raised $800 million in venture capital before dying from negative cash flow back in 2013. Tesla has attempted to solve the problem by being both the chicken and egg by creating a network of Superchargers.
That’s what makes Statiq so interesting. The company, based in the New Delhi suburb of Gurugram, is bootstrapping an EV charging network using a multi-revenue model that it hopes will allow it to avoid the financial challenges that other charging networks have faced. It’s in the current Y Combinator batch and will be presenting at Demo Day later this month.
Akshit Bansal and Raghav Arora, the company’s co-founders, worked together previously as consultants and built a company for buying photos online, eventually reaching 50,000 monthly actives. They decided to make a pivot — a hard pivot really — into EVs and specifically charging equipment.
Statiq founders Raghav Arora and Akshit Bansal. Photos via Statiq
“We felt the need to do something about the climate because we were living in Delhi and Delhi is one of the most polluted cities in the world, and India is home to a lot of the polluted cities in the world. So we wanted to do something about it,” Bansal said. As they researched the causes of pollution, they learned that automobile exhaust represented a large part of the problem locally. They looked at alternatives, but EV charging stations remain basically non-existent across the country.
Thus, they founded Statiq in October 2019 and officially launched this past May. They have installed more than 150 charging stations in Delhi, Bangalore, and Mumbai and the surrounding environs.
Let’s get to the economics though, since that to me is the most fascinating part of their story. Statiq as I noted has a multi-revenue model. First, end users buy a subscription from Statiq to use the network, and then users pay a fee per charging session. That session fee is split between Statiq and the property owner, giving landlords who install the stations an incremental revenue boost.
A Statiq charging station. Photo via Statiq
When it comes to installation, Statiq has a couple of tricks up its sleeves. First, the company’s charging equipment — according to Bansal — costs roughly a third of the equivalent cost of U.S. equipment. That makes the base technology cheaper to acquire. From there, the company negotiates installations with landlords where the landlords will pay the fixed costs of installation in exchange for that continuing session charge fee.
On top of all that, the charging stations have advertising on them, offering another income stream particularly in high-visibility locations like shopping malls which are critical for a successful EV charging network.
In short, Statiq hasn’t had to outlay capital in order to put in place their charging equipment — and they were able to bootstrap before applying to YC earlier this year. Bansal said the company had dozens of charging stations and thousands of paid sessions on its platform before joining their YC batch, and “we are now growing 20% week-over-week.”
What’s next? It’s all about deliberate scaling. The EV market is turning on in India, and Statiq wants to be where those cars are. Bansal and his co-founder are hoping to ride the wave, continuing to build out critical infrastructure along the way. India’s government will likely continue to help: its approved billions of dollars in incentives for EVs and for charging stations, tipping the economics even further in the direction of a clean car future.
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Tesla’s Megapack powers its small, but growing energy storage business
Tesla’s energy storage business picked up steam in the second quarter and even played a minor role in the company’s fourth consecutive quarter of profitability, according to earnings reported Wednesday.
Commercial and residential energy storage sales as well as solar are still mere slices of Tesla’s overall business, which is largely dominated by automotive. However, second-quarter results show some promise for energy storage, particularly Megapack, the utility-scale energy storage product that launched in 2019 and is modeled after the giant battery system it deployed in South Australia.
While Tesla does provide separate deployment stats for solar and energy storage, it combines the two when reporting revenue, making it impossible to fully measure the success of Megapack. However, Tesla made a point in its earnings statement to flag Megapack as a winner in the second quarter and noted that it turned a profit for the first time.
“There’s a lot of demand for the product and we’re growing the production rates as fast as we can,” Drew Baglino, senior vice president of powertrain and energy engineering, said during Wednesday’s earnings call.
For the past four years or so Tesla has been asking investors to view it as an energy company instead of just an automaker. Some analysts think that the real value in Tesla’s business will be when it actually achieves some level of parity between the two sides of the shop — a goal that Musk is also shooting for.
But energy storage and solar has remained in Tesla’s automotive shadow, despite assurances that these business products will eventually be equals. For now, energy storage remains a small, but growing, fraction of Tesla’s revenue.
CEO Elon Musk predicted its energy business would be roughly the same size at its automotive unit over the long term. He did not provide a timeline.
One product that Tesla is hoping will accelerate the growth of its energy storage business is Autobidder, the company’s machine-learning platform for automated energy trading.
Autobidder provides grid stabilization and ensures that things are “super smooth,” Musk said, adding that it is necessary in order to solve the sustainable energy problem
Overall, energy storage deployed was up 61% on a quarterly basis (from 260 megawatt hours to 419 megawatt hours) signs that the business is beginning to recover to levels before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Energy storage deployments in the second quarter were still only 1% higher than the same period last year, illustrating that Tesla still has a ways to go before it hits numbers reached in the third and fourth quarters of 2019.
Meanwhile, Tesla’s solar deployments shrank.
Tesla installed 27 MW of solar in the second quarter, down 23% from the previous quarter and off 7% from the same period last year. Some of that slippage is likely due to the economic slowdown and shelter in place orders that swept the U.S. in response to COVID-19.
Tesla became the leading solar installer in the United States with its acquisition of SolarCity but its position slipped as Sunrun and Vivint Solar surged in the U.S. market. Now, its looking to regain some of that ground with its Solar Roof, a new shingle-like product that has been development and testing for years. Tesla said Wednesday that installations of the Solar Roof roughly tripled in the second quarter compared to the first quarter. However, the company did not provide specific figures, making it unclear just how many Solar Roof installations it has completed.
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Revel lands permit to bring hundreds of electric mopeds to San Francisco
Shared electric moped startup Revel received a permit that will allow it to operate in San Francisco, beginning in August.
The startup will start with a fleet of 432 mopeds featuring a new paint scheme and a more powerful engine to help riders get up and over the city’s infamously steep hills. For now, the service area will cover certain neighborhoods of San Francisco, including Cow Hollow, Dogpatch, the Financial District, Golden Gate Heights, Haight-Ashbury, the Mission District, Outer Mission, Pacific Heights, the Richmond District, the Tenderloin and the Castro. The service area will expand in the “near future,” Revel said.
Only licensed drivers with the Revel app can rent the mopeds. Each Revel can carry up to two riders, is limited to local streets and is capped at a speed of 30 miles per hour. Revel rides will cost $1 per person to start, followed by $0.39 per minute to ride.
Each Revel moped is equipped with two U.S. DOT-certified helmets that must be worn at all times. The company also provides third-party liability insurance automatically to all riders.
Revel, founded in March 2018 by Frank Reig and Paul Suhey, started with a pilot program in Brooklyn and later expanded to Queens. Revel has been on a fast-paced growth track, expanding to Austin, Miami and Washington, D.C in its first 18 months of operation. In January, the company launched in Oakland. The company also operates in sections of Manhattan, as well as south and central Bronx.
Revel is a bit different than some of the shared mobility startups out there. The company doesn’t rely on gig economy workers to charge its mopeds — a method used by e-scooter companies like Bird. Instead, Revel has full-time workers that maintain the mopeds and swap out the batteries as needed.
The company said it will begin hiring workers in San Francisco once it launches in August. Revel said it is participating in the First Source Hiring Program to find local employees.
The startup raised $27.6 million in capital last October in a Series A round led by Ibex Investors — funds required to fuel its expansion plans. The equity round included newcomer Toyota AI Ventures and further investments from Blue Collective, Launch Capital and Maniv Mobility.
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Tesla holds on to recent gains with bullish analyst target of $2,300
Wall Street darling Tesla is holding on to its recent gains today on the back of a bullish analyst report, despite some weakness in tech shares.
Tesla has seen its value skyrocket in recent quarters, rising from a 52-week low share price of $211 to $1,548.81 today. That figure, however, is low in the eyes of some. Enter Piper Sandler.
The Piper analyst report, which was first released late Monday, gives Tesla a new price target of $2,322, up from the group’s prior price target of a little over $900 per share. The stock still has room to run, some believe, perhaps explaining some of the mania that related companies have seen in recent weeks, including fellow electric car manufacturers Nikola, Nio and others.
It was enough to prompt a “wow” from Tesla CEO Elon Musk via a tweet Monday evening.
Wow
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 14, 2020
The Piper report cites two key factors for its new Tesla price target: The company’s edge in manufacturing and resulting unit volume, and the possibility that software will allow the company to eventually generate operating margins in the mid-20s.
On the manufacturing front, Piper increased its 2020 delivery estimates based on Tesla’s recent second-quarter numbers. The firm believes Tesla can hit its original 2020 delivery guidance of 500,000 units, which it notes is impressive, given factory closures due to COVID-19.
Piper suggested Tesla can scale rapidly in the coming years. The constraint isn’t customer demand, but instead capacity, the analyst suggested. Of course, building out production capacity is no small and cheap feat. Still, with customer demand wide open, Piper sees big revenue gains moving forward.
The latter argument feels more speculative. A 25% operating margin implies that the automotive company’s gross margins would need to be far higher, a seeming stretch for a company that sells molded metal and plastic in a competitive market.
The basis of Piper’s argument centers on Tesla’s software, specifically its FSD, or “full self-driving” feature, an $8,000 add-on that provides advanced driver assistance over its standard Autopilot system.
Let us provide some quick backstory so that everyone understands: Today, Tesla vehicles come standard with Autopilot, an advanced driver assistance system that offers a combination of adaptive cruise control and lane steering. Tesla once charged for this feature as well, but made it standard in April 2019.
The more robust and higher-functioning version of Autopilot is called full self-driving. FSD includes the parking feature Summon as well as Navigate on Autopilot, an active guidance system that navigates a car from a highway on-ramp to off-ramp, including interchanges and making lane changes. The system now recognizes and responds to traffic lights, as well.
Still, Tesla vehicles are not self-driving cars. The system requires a human driver to remain engaged at all times.
Piper believes the FSD price will continue to rise, driving up margins. The firm predicted the cost of FSD could rise as high as $40,000.
“Thanks to the high-margin nature of the FSD package, we think that by the 2030s, Tesla could conceivably be selling vehicles at cost — or even below cost — while still achieving higher operating margins,” Piper wrote.
There is a very material catch to all of this. Tesla is able to recognize FSD revenue on its balance sheet as it rolls out more features. In other words, Tesla has to keep improving the product to be able to capture that entire line item.
In the first-quarter earnings call, Tesla CFO Zachary Kirkhorn explained that the company takes “roughly half” of the FSD as revenue. The other half of it goes into deferred revenue.
“Our deferred revenue balance is continuing to grow,” he said at the time. “It’s a little bit over $600 million. And so as we release features with time, at the end of every quarter, we take a look at what features have been released, associated value and then we can release that from the deferred revenue into our financials for that quarter. And then cars going forward, once the feature is released, we can recognize that revenue.”
For Tesla shareholders, institutional and retail alike, Piper’s report is welcome. Now Tesla has to live up to raised expectations. The company reports earnings on July 22. TechCrunch will be tuned in.
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Fisker raises $50 million to bring its all-electric Ocean SUV to market in 2022
Electric vehicle startup Fisker Inc. said Wednesday it has raised $50 million, much needed capital that will go toward funding the next phase of engineering work on the company’s all-electric luxury SUV.
The startup is aiming to launch the Fisker Ocean SUV in 2022.
The Series C funding round was led by Moore Strategic Ventures LLC, the private investment vehicle of Louis M. Bacon, the billionaire hedge fund manager.
“Since we first showed the car at CES earlier this year, reaction from customers and investors has been extremely positive,” Fisker Inc. Chairman and CEO Henrik Fisker said in a statement. “We are radically challenging the conventional industry thinking around developing and selling cars and this capital will allow us to execute our planned timeline to start producing vehicles in 2022.”
The company is also beefing up its executive lineup to help push the project along. Fisker said it has hired Burkhard Huhnke as its CTO. Huhnke was the former vice president of e-mobility for Volkswagen America and vice president of automotive at chipmaker Synopses.
As CTO, Huhnke will spread his time between the company’s R&D work in Los Angeles and its new Fisker Innovation Lab in Silicon Valley.
Building a car company isn’t easy. Just ask Fisker. The well-known automotive designer, who was behind the Aston Martin V8 Vantage, Aston Martin DB9 and BMW Z8 among others, launched a startup called Fisker Automotive that aimed to produce a luxury plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. The flagship vehicle, the Fisker Karma, debuted at the 2008 North American International Auto Show, and first deliveries were in 2011. But the company ran into numerous challenges and production was suspended in November 2012 and ended in bankruptcy a year later.
China’s Wanxiang Group purchased what was left of Fisker in 2014 and launched a new company called Karma Automotive . On a side note: Karma, which has had its own financial struggles, also announced Wednesday it had raised $100 million.
This time around, Fisker is focused on an SUV. The Fisker Ocean, which was officially revealed in January at CES 2020, starts at $37,499 before applying any federal income tax credit or state incentives.
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Karma Automotive raises $100 million as it looks to resell it EV platform to other automakers
Karma Automotive has raised a $100 million lifeline from outside investors, as reported by Bloomberg, with the struggling electric vehicle maker’s fortunes likely buoyed by the current market optimism on other EV companies, including Tesla. Karma is the reincarnated version of Fisker Automotive, which previously faced bankruptcy before being acquired by Wanxiang Group in 2014.
Karma Automotive has made more progress than Fisker ever did, including actually delivering around 500 of its inaugural Revero electric sport sedan in 2019. The company will be continuing to sell the Revero, which retails starting at around $140,000, and will also be looking to add a high-horsepower GTE version, as well as a supercar for an even higher-tier customer.
The automaker also says that it’s in discussions with a partner for a commercial delivery truck, which it intends to develop in prototype form by year’s end. There are a number of different companies pursuing delivery vans for use by courier companies, including UPS and FedEx, and the increase in e-commerce spending presents an opportunity for multiple players to succeed in this category, even as there is a rush on in terms of entrants.
Karma will also seek to leverage and extend the benefits of its fresh investment by shopping around its EV platform to other automakers and OEMs, the company says, and also will eventually expand beyond pure EVs to hybrid fuel vehicles. In short, it sounds like Karma is willing to try just about everything and anything to chart a path toward profitability, but time will tell if that’s intelligent opportunism, or scattershot desperation.
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EV startup Nio secures $1 billion investment from China entities
Chinese electric vehicle startup Nio has secured a $1 billion investment from several state-owned companies in Hefei in return for agreeing to establish headquarters in the city’s economic development hotspot and giving up a stake in one of its business units.
The injection of capital comes from several investors, including Hefei City Construction and Investment Holding Group, CMG-SDIC Capital and Anhui Provincial Emerging Industry Investment Co.
Nio’s factory is already in Hefei, which it operates with Anhui Jianghuai Automobile Group. However, the company’s headquarters and other operations are in Shanghai about 300 miles from the Anhui provincial city. Under this agreement, Nio will locate all of its Chinese operations, including R&D, sales, service and supply chain, in the Hefei Economic and Technological Development Area.
The investment is another important milestone of Nio for its long-term growth, Nio said in a statement Wednesday.
“After receiving the investments from the strategic investors, Nio will have more sufficient funds to support its business development, to enhance its leadership in the products and technologies of smart electric vehicles and to offer services exceeding users’ expectation,” the company said, adding that the launch of Nio China headquarters in Hefei enables Nio to improve its operational efficiency and to sustain its growth and competitiveness in the long run.
Despite the new capital, Nio faces a series of challenges, including a downturn in the Chinese automotive market. Electric vehicle sales in China declined 4%, to 1.21 million vehicles in 2019, from the previous year. The company’s ES8 and ES6 vehicles haven’t generated the same demand as Tesla’s Model 3. Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic is dampening demand further as customers stayed home.
Structuring the deal requires some asset shuffling. The investment is targeted toward Nio China, a recently established business unit under Nio Inc.
Investors will put 7 billion yuan, or $1 billion, into Nio’s holding company. Nio will put its core China businesses and assets — which include vehicle research and development, supply chain and its power division — into Nio China, a subsidiary of the holding company. Nio’s parent company will also invest into Nio China.
At the end, investors will hold a 24.1% stake in Nio China while Nio will have a 75.9% controlling equity interesting into the unit.
The company expects the closing of the investments to take place in the second quarter of 2020, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions.
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Citroën introduces a two-seat EV that costs €19.99 a month
The Citroën Ami is a new take on urban mobility. It’s electric, cheap and doesn’t require a license. In short, it’s less of a car and more of an electric scooter with two seats, doors and a heater. Jokes aside, the Citroën Ami could be a glimpse at the future of mobility.
The innovation isn’t in the technical aspects of the Ami. Citroën is positioning the Ami as an urban mobility solution. The size is perfect for narrow streets and the price is right to be competitive against public transport. The Ami is not classified as a motor vehicle. As such, operators do not need a license and can be as young as 14 in France and 16 in other European countries.
Passengers sit side-by-side in the heated compartment and under the panoramic roof. The 5.5kWh lithium-ion battery is housed under the floor and is good for up to 70 kilometers after a three-hour charge from a standard 220v outlet. The top speed is 45 km/h (28 mph).
And because it’s a Citroën, there’s a nod to the company’s quirky past: The side windows open manually by tilting upwards like the classic 2 CV.
The Ami is available to consumers in several different ways. It can be rented long term at a cost of €19.99 (including VAT) per month with an initial payment of €2,644 (including VAT). The Ami can be rented through a car-sharing service for up to a day at a rate of €0.26 per min. Or, the Ami is available for purchase from €6,000 (including VAT).
Citroën is taking orders for the Ami starting on March 30 in France and several months later in Spain, Italy, Belgium, Portugal and then Germany. The first Ami vehicles are expected by June.
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EV fleet management gets another venture-backed contender as Electriphi raises $3.5 million
Electriphi, a provider of charging management and fleet monitoring software for electric vehicles, has joined the scrum of startups looking to provide services to the growing number of electric vehicle fleets in the U.S.
The San Francisco-based company has just raised $3.5 million in seed funding from investors, including Wireframe Ventures, the Urban Innovation Fund and Blackhorn Ventures. Lemnos Labs and Acario Innovation also participated in the round.
Electriphi’s pitch has resonated with school districts. It counts the Twin Rivers Unified School District in Sacramento, Calif. as one of its benchmark customers.
“Twin Rivers Unified School District has the largest fleet of electric school buses in North America, and our ambition is to transition to a fully electric fleet in the coming years,” said Tim Shannon, transportation services director, Twin Rivers Unified School District, in a statement. “This is a significant undertaking, and we needed a trusted partner that could provide us state-of-the-art charging management and help us with data collection and monitoring.”
There are several companies pursuing this market — all with either a bit of a head start, significant corporate backers or more capital. Existing offerings from EVConnect, GreenLots, GreenFlux, AmplyPower all compete with Electriphi.
The company is betting that the experience of co-founder Muffi Ghadiali, a former senior director at ChargePoint who led hardware and software development for fast charging infrastructure, can sway customers. Joining Ghadiali is Sanjay Dayal, who previously worked at Agralogics, Tibco, Xamplify, Versata and Sybase .
There’s also the sheer scale of the opportunity, which is likely to see multiple companies emerge as winners.
“There are millions of public and commercial fleet vehicles in the U.S. alone that we rely on daily for transportation, delivery and services,” said Paul Straub, managing partner, Wireframe Ventures. “Many of these are beginning to consider electrification and the opportunity is tremendous.”
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Tesla Model 3 makes Consumer Reports ‘Top Picks’ list for 2020
Tesla’s Model 3 is among the top 10 choices for car buyers in 2020, according to Consumer Reports. The nonprofit organization released its “Top Picks” of the year on Thursday, and it included Tesla’s most affordable vehicle alongside cars from automakers including Toyota, Subaru, Honda, Kia and Lexus.
The Model 3 was chosen as one of three vehicles in the $45K-$55K category, alongside the Lexus RX and the Toyota Supra. CR lauded its “thrilling driving experience,” including “impressive handling and quick precise steering [that] help it feel like a sports car.” They did ding it slightly for having a “stiff ride” overall, but said that that’s more than made up for by its long EV battery range and emission-free eco-friendly qualities.
Consumer Reports also specifically called out a worry about the Model 3 that “Autopilot, an optional system on the vehicle, does not require the driver to stay engaged, creating safety concerns.” Tesla has always positioned Autopilot as a driver-assist feature that still requires a driver to be ready to take over control at a moment’s notice, but critics have suggested its implementation can lead to misuse resulting in inattentiveness.
Clearly, that concern wasn’t enough to prevent CR from counting the Model 3 among its top recommendations for vehicles in 2020. Tesla also ended up ranking 11th overall out of 33 automakers in Consumer Reports’ 2020 automotive brand report card, climbing eight positions from last year. The Model 3, and the rapid improvements that Tesla was able to make in its production as it scaled assembly of the vehicle, clearly helped it in the eyes of the consumer-focused nonprofit.
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