This Start-up is Attaining Sustainability Goals with EV Fleet as a Service

You get your pizza in thirty minutes. Even some things are delivered to you in just ten minutes. Have you ever thought about how all this happens? Last mile delivery is a hard part for almost every Ecommerce company and most of it is outsourced.  Last mile deliveries cost a hefty amount and are a big hurdle in making the products affordable for the end point customer. While looking for business that is doing something for this, we Bluewheelz, a startup that provides EV fleets as a service. Below is a part of a conversation with Chanpreet Singh Sethi, Founder and CEO Bluwheelz in which we tried to know what all Bluewheelz is doing.

What does EV fleet as service mean?

The EV fleet as a service means that we provide a commercial mobility fleet to logistics, groceries and ecommerce companies for their last mile connectivity. The existing setup would be normal CNG and Diesel engine vehicles, like the petrol bikes and three/four wheelers which are running for the last mile deliveries. We are giving the same fleet but the fuel and the technology would be electric vehicles. Therefore, the offering becomes EV Fleet as a Service. It is a leased fleet, where we will procure the vehicle, the driver, and the maintenance. 

From where are the vehicles outsourced?

We procure the vehicles from different OEMs. We are in talks with Omega Seiki, Euler Motors, Mahindra (Two and Three Wheelers). These are some of the companies who venture into electric vehicles. We would be procuring these two and three wheelers and hiring the drivers for providing the bokeh solutions to our partners and offer them EV Fleet as A Service. They would only be required to place the vehicle at the last mile place and we will take care of it. 

What role do you think Artificial Intelligence plays?

In the case of ICE vehicles, the systems to run them have already been set for decades. The pump, the fuel systems and almost everything is running on similar patterns from an old time. Instead, when we talk about the EVs they are in the nascent age and the challenges of the EV adoption are the charging infrastructure, parking space and the maintenance. We are debugging the whole space by having our own fleet. We put some telemetric and some hardware and software to analyze the efficiencies of these vehicles. Their running, mileage, requirement, parking space, availability are mapped and then through that AI and IOT, which is in the vehicle, we get a complete data analysis of how this vehicle can be placed in different geographies and in different industry verticals.

With the help of that data we make our offering better. This will help us be not only a vehicle solution but a complete ecosystem of EVs where the vehicles' charging systems, the maintenance, and the rider will be collaborated the for the Ecommerce and Shippers which have not been able to transit from normal engine to electric vehicle because of these constraints. Data plays a very critical role by giving up the exact numbers which are useful to make an operational model of EV fleet. We are trying to come up as a single platform which has AI and ML enabled and can give the customer all the solutions at once. 

How financially viable are your services?

So, there are two types of cost attached to our service. One is Apex cost means when you go and buy a vehicle. Apex cost is one time and currently is higher in case of electric vehicles.

Another is running cost (per kilometer cost). When comparing ICE engines to the EVs there is a difference of almost 90-95 percent in the running cost. Where a three wheeler costs INR 4-5 the electric vehicle costs 40-50 paisa. A similar thing can be seen in two wheelers too. Eventually, things which make an electric vehicle cost high will come under control and this apex price will also be reduced. 

What do you think the potential market would be in the upcoming five years?

Market is in its very nascent age. We have not converted over 5 percent of the existing ICE vehicles to EVs. In the current state, over 66 per cent of the pollution is caused by traditional fuel mobility, out of which more than 70 per cent is due to commercial mobility. It is not only us but the whole globe that needs EVs. There is a real problem of pollution which everyone is facing. As a market, even if we go to fifty percent of the conversion in another five years, that is more than 20 million vehicles in the two wheelers segment and more than two million in three wheelers and four wheelers all combined. This gives a very big opportunity to anyone who is looking to cater. 

What is your chance of coming into the retail sector?

In logistics, when we say, D2C or Retail, it is basically like, we as a company are into fleet as a service so all our premium partners are into B2B and D2C sectors. When we talk about B2B we have Delhivery, we have Bigbasket in the D2C segment. Our objective is not to touch the customers directly but become the most preferred vendor for operations for delivery vehicles to all these Ecommerce and Quick Commerce grocery and pharmaceutical companies. We want to solve the challenges of last mile delivery by plug and play solutions.

so we would be a platform where we would be either our own procured vehicles would be placed or in the time frame we would act as an aggregator where anyone who wants to switch from their ICE Vehicles to EVs and would be guided and properly taken into our fold by giving them an opportunity to buy the EV and give them business.