Uber, Sun Mobility to Deploy E-Autos in India

The Ride-hailing giant Uber on Wednesday announced a partnership with SUN Mobility to deploy e-autos in India.

As part of the agreement, SUN Mobility will offer its energy infrastructure platform, which includes swappable Li-Ion smart batteries and quick interchange stations to select original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) for building e-autos.

Fleet owners and Uber’s driver-partners will benefit because they can buy vehicles without the battery to save money on initial acquisition costs.

According to the statement, auto owners will receive charged, swappable batteries as a service by SUN Mobility, thereby helping bring the overall cost of e-autos in line with their internal combustion engine (ICE) counterpart as batteries constitute almost 40% of the overall cost of an electric vehicle.

“We are delighted to partner with SUN Mobility, an industry pioneer to try to usher in a wave of electric vehicles in the mass market category,” said Pradeep Parameswaran, president Uber, India and South Asia.

“This is an important step forward in fulfilling our vision for creating a mobility ecosystem that is sustainable, provides cleaner air and helps build smarter cities across the region,” Parameswaran said.

SUN Mobility is a 50:50 joint venture between Maini Group and SUN Group, pioneers in areas of electric mobility and clean energy. The company was launched in April 2017 and is led by Chetan Maini, previously founder of Reva which was renamed Mahindra Electric, and Uday Khemka, Vice Chairman of SUN Group.

“Our mission is to give users a cost-effective and convenient energy infrastructure solution to accelerate the adoption of EVs,” said Maini, Co-Founder and Vice-Chairman of SUN Mobility. “Partnering with Uber, the leading global player in personal mobility, will help create a wide EV landscape at scale, that will transform the way people commute,” Maini said.

The move is in line with NITI Aayog which is considering a policy proposal to ban all two-wheelers running on internal combustion engine under 150cc by 2025 and three-wheelers by 2023.

This partnership will be piloted across select cities in the coming months, Uber said.