Revolt bets on portable battery to overcome range anxiety

Lack of charging infrastructure is not a problem for Revolt Motors, the largest player in India's electric motorcycle market, according to Anjali Rattan, chairperson of RattanIndia Enterprises, the parent company of Revolt.

“The reason why my motorcycle sells the most is probably because of portable batteries. If somebody is staying on the fourth floor, they can just take the battery out and charge,” Rattan says, adding that portability drives away any range anxiety. “That becomes a motivating factor at least in today’s time when charging infrastructure is not adequate,” she says.

India’s electric two-wheeler market is currently dominated by scooters even though motorcycles account for around two-thirds of the overall two-wheeler sales. While legacy automakers have shied away from launching electric motorcycles, Revolt Motors is the biggest player in the tiny e-motorcycle market. The company sold 7,350 e-motorcycles last fiscal, as per Vahan data. Beleaguered Tork Motors, in which Bharat Forge wrote off over ₹150 crore investment, stood a distant second with the sale of 2,158 units in FY24. Bengaluru-based high-performance motorcycle maker Ultraviolette sold 248 units last financial year.

“In metro cities, a lot of our customers take out the battery for charging. Our 3.24 KWh batteries weigh roughly 20 kg, so it is easier to take these out,” says Rattan. She, however, adds that it will not be possible in a high performance motorcycle where batteries are much heavier.

Revolt on Tuesday entered the commuter e-motorcycle segment by launching RV1 with prices starting at ₹84,990 (ex-showroom). The RV1 comes with two battery options: a 2.2 kWh pack with a claimed range of up to 100 km, and a 3.24 kWh pack with a claimed range of 160 km. Deliveries of the motorbike are expected to begin in the next 10 days.

This comes a month after Bhavish Aggarwal-led Ola Electric showcased a new range of electric motorcycles with prices starting from ₹74,999. However, deliveries of Ola’s motorbikes will begin next year.

When asked why legacy companies have ignored the electric motorcycle market so far while several upstarts have entered the fray, Rattan says large automakers have invested so much on the internal-combustion engine (ICE) technology that they don’t want to give it up so easily.

“When you are making a hell lot of money, you overlook disruption somehow and sometimes you don’t want to embrace it for the reason that you have invested so much on ICE so today if they have to shut their ICE shops and make EVs, can you imagine the kind of losses they will do? Would they want to disrupt their own market?” asks Rattan.

“If they launch an EV motorcycle, it’s a no-brainer that people will buy those because of better technology and fuel cost savings. That’s the only reason I don’t think they will really aggressively work on EVs. They will wait it out. Not that they are not working. Everybody is working,” says Rattan.

On being asked if Revolt is looking to enter the e-scooter market, Rattan says the electric scooter market is cluttered. “There are two strategies: one is to make it ourselves which will take about a year to get it up and rolling which eventually we will do. The other is that many scooter players want to sell their companies. I could also look at that. But such companies have a lot of liabilities,” she explains.

Rattan says the company is expected to hit profitability once its monthly volumes cross the 2,000 mark. Big auto OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) are able to get lucrative auto component pricing because of their scale, she says.

Revolt currently sources battery packs from Chinese cell giant CATL, says Rattan. “Until my sales numbers go really high, I wouldn’t want to explore assembling battery packs,” she adds.

When asked if there is a need for a uniform fast charging connector for all two-wheelers, Rattan says, "Eventually, like all smartphones have a single charger, we will have to do the same thing for all two-wheelers. Once that happens, charging infrastructure won’t be a problem."