THE PACK “Electric Motorcycles” News had a little chat with Shrawan Raja, the founder & editor of Electric Vehicle Web in India. Electric Vehicle Web is a portal about the electric vehicle market mainly in India. Their news website updates almost everyday with information about new and upcoming electric two- and four-wheelers, as well as innovations in the EV scene from the Indian community. Electric Vehicle Web also presents their experience to young India that wants to educate about electric vehicles and stay future-ready.
But Shrawan Raja thinks also global and had a talk with César Mendoza about the future plans with NITO Bikes (Italy). Also Nepal-based Yatri Motorcycles is working on a second bike, and Shrawan spoke to the founder Ashim Pandey. Electric Vehicle Web shared these 2 articles with our readers which we really appreciate! You’ll see a preview here but you can read the full article(s) at Electric Vehicle Web. Just push the button …
Italy’s Nito Bikes introducing a ‘rocket-like’ electric motorcycle in 2021
Italian startup Nito bikes has drawn the attention of the EV community with its unconventional design, the use of wood, a strong spec sheet and a thrilling motorcycle concept. ElectricVehicleWeb connected with the founder of the company, César Mendoza, an accomplished industrial designer, to ask him about the vision of his company, the electric motorcycle project, and his take on the Indian electric vehicle market.
EVW: Can you give us a bit of your background and why you decided to launch an electric vehicle company?
We are very lucky that we come from the design field. This is the area of my specialization and the main part of my job. I’m an industrial designer and studied in my country that is Venezuela. I came to Italy to continue my study here and finished my diploma. Then I went to Japan for four years and came back to Italy again. I was very lucky because after some years, I became the Dean of the school I studied in – Istituto Europeo di Design in Turin. That school has a fantastic course in transportation design. I worked there 12 years and we designed for many big brands like Ferrari, McLaren, Toyota, Maserati, Aston Martin and Tesla. In 2010, we did a design for Tesla Motors with the school and at that moment I understood the potential of this kind of technology. At the same time, I understood that light vehicles will move ahead first with electric technology because at that moment, the Tesla was a little more than 2 Tons.
I understood that it is easier when working with a two-wheeler because the weight is around 100 kg and with two people, the total weight is around 250 kg. So when I finished my experience with the team in Istituto Europeo di Design, I decided to open a company to combine design and electric technology. At that time, Europe was not really at the forefront in this field with only the Chinese having long experience in this kind of vehicles. We travelled to China to search for a partner for the technology and find a complementary way to produce. We decided to build Nito that is partly produced in China but completely designed and engineered in Turin. We have around 30 per cent parts of the motorcycle that is produced in Italy. Our factory here makes the final assembly and final testing and we distribute all around Europe and USA at this moment.
Yatri Motorcycles to launch two electric motorcycles in 2021
Speaking to ElectricVehicleWeb.in, Ashim Pandey, the founder of Yatri Motorcycles, a Nepali startup that is specializing in electric vehicles, said the company received a big response to the showcasing of the Yatri Project Zero prototype motorcycle in Kathmandu last December. It planned to make 50 units as a way to announce its entry and move to smaller and more affordable products in subsequent phases.
Pandey said that his company was on course to launch the Project Zero motorcycle in March this year but the Coronavirus pandemic led them to change the business strategy. Here’s what the founder told us about his company and upcoming launches:
EVW: What is the status of Yatri Project Zero?
AP: We are actually developing the v3 (production version) of Project Zero. Unfortunately, we couldn’t really catch up with the timeline; we had lots of testing to be done on the v3, which we stopped in the last three months. Regarding the actual development status, we are actually heavily invested right now in Project One, which was originally planned for 2021. We are almost finalized the concept and we have reached concept validation, starting with some preliminary research.
We are very confident that we can come out with v1 (early version) in 2020 itself. Project Zero will be pushed back a bit because of our work with Project One. Project Zero v3 has been refined to a certain extent where we have to get into actual hands-on testing. We are working very closely with all the requirements that ARAI has set for two-wheeler manufacturers and our aim is to get certified from ARAI. Unfortunately, we don’t have such institutions like ARAI in Nepal. For that we need substantial amount of time in testing, which had been delayed. The plan was actually to get all set up and unveil the demo unit of V3 by March 2020; get started with the testing and launching the production version by October 2020. But now it seems like we would be coming up with the production unit by March 2021.
The good thing is by the end of 2020, we would be coming up with the V1 of Project One, which is far more exciting than Project Zero personally for me. It’s a completely different platform – a dual sport platform; we don’t really want to be in the endure segment because there are lot of really good motorcycles out there in Nepal. We want to be a city commuter with decent off-roading capability, given the road conditions of Nepal and lots of people here really love dual sport.
