 "Altigreen tests fuel saving, emission reducing tech with BigBasket, Carzonrent")
Altigreen Propulsion Labs, a clean technology company that has developed a retrofit electric kit which when connected to any four wheeler can reduce emission rates by 20% and improve fuel efficiency by a fourth is testing its technology with fleet at BigBasket and Carzonrent.
Backed by Jupiter Capital, Altigreen has developed a motor and battery kit called HyPixi that once fitted in a vehicle uses the stored stored kinetic energy to run an auto or a car effectively increasing fuel efficiency by 26%. The kit can work on vehicles below two tonnes carrying capacity.
The company has been working on various prototype and the current one is on customer trial with companies such as BigBasket that have small trucks that are used to deliver products and Carzonrent a car rental company.
“We are not directly going to sell the product to customers now. We wants more and more fleet owners to use it and then in 18 months when we have the capacity to service individual clients. Increasingly, new age business men are becoming conscious about their surroundings and the kit also gives them a better fuel efficiency. This makes the product attractive to them and we are already starting to increasing our customer base in the B2B side,” said Amitabh Saran, co-founder of Altigreen.
The cost of the kit varies from Rs 60,000 to Rs 1 lakh and comes with a two year warranty. The company recommends that the battery be changed every 3 years which would cost Rs 9,000. Altigreen plans to train workers in existing multi brand service centers, who will be able to install the kit into car or a truck. The installation takes four and a half hours.
The kit is also eligible for subsidy under the faster adoption and manufacturing of hybrid and electric vehicles policy.
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"We are not targeting new vehicle owners for our kit, we are targeting vehicles whose warranty has already expired. We think that a taxi owner crosses 40,000 kilometers quite first after which the warranty expires and hence it will make sense for him to install the kit. Also,with cities getting more and more polluted each day we believe that people will also want to adopt anything that reduces emission," added Saran.
While the company has designed the kit currently only for 4 wheelers and trucks the same can be modified for three wheels and two wheelers. However, the company plans to get into that after seeing the response to the four wheeler kit. The kit also continuously monitors the health of the vehicles and gives real time reports to the driver. If there is any problem in the kit the vehicle continues to work normally and the kit does not need any external support to run such as electric charging etc.
The company has already raised Rs 20 crore from Jupiter Capital, Chetan Maini, co-founder of Reva an electric car and is in continuous talks to raise more funds. Saran says that the additional funds will be used for manufacturing and invested in research and development to further strengthen the product. The product is built and approved as per the CMRV and the lab testing of the products have been done at Automotive Research Association of India as well as International Center for Automotive Technology.