3W EV fleet operator 3eco Systems and advanced battery-tech and deep-tech startup Log9 Materials have announced a strategic collaboration to deploy 2,000+ InstaCharged heavy-duty Shakti 8 Cargo (S8Ci) EVs across India over the next 18 months. The vehicles’ deployments will be initiated from Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Chennai, and then extended to other metro cities. Notably, these Commercial Electric Vehicles (CEV) will be catering to e-commerce and hyperlocal logistics players such as Amazon, Flipkart, Big Basket, etc.
In India, the last-mile logistics sector is anticipated to increase by 900 percent to USD 9 billion by 2025, largely driven by the e-commerce industry. For intra-city logistics, 3-wheeler cargo vehicles are fast becoming a preferred choice for last-mile deliveries, with EVs winning in this segment due to the lowest operating cost and highest efficiency. And this is exactly where the collaboration between Log9 and 3eco Systems comes in and can prove to be a game-changer.
Shakti 8 Cargo (S8Ci) EVs by 3ev Industries is an L5 CEV that has been designed to serve last-mile logistics use-cases; it comes with a range (on a full charge) of 130 km. and payload capacity of 580 kg., besides having several other superlative high-performance features. InstaCharged by Log9’s RapidX batteries, the cargo EV can be charged from 0 to 100 percent in less than 35 minutes.
Peter Voelkner, MD, 3eco Systems said, “3eco serves the widest list of enterprise customers as a dedicated EV fleet operator in India, currently with operations in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Coimbatore, and Mumbai. We take a holistic approach to understand the complete value chain before we enter a market or customer engagement. We analyze the bottlenecks, operating challenges, and other efficiency issues, then work with our strategic partners like Log9 Materials to design solutions for greater productivity based on our operating capabilities. After jointly optimizing the services using our platform, we unlock substantial benefits for the customers and the communities in the form of higher cost savings and service improvement.”
E-retail logistics is a growing industry that is solving the niche problems for India’s booming e-commerce players. Traditional logistics providers face challenges in offering comprehensive last-mile services for online retailers. This poses issues such as delayed deliveries, poor last-mile delivery management (particularly of returned items), and insufficient real-time tracking, among others. The partnership between Log9 and 3eco will be attempting to overcome these issues.
Speaking of the strategic partnership, Kartik Hajela, Co-founder & COO, Log9 Materials said, “The last mile logistics sector has finally come of age and has started manifesting its impact on the Indian economy. With customers today flocking to e-commerce platforms for A to Z, the industry today calls for technologies that empower fleet operations to deliver on time, every time. Our RapidX batteries have earned their reputation for the fastest-charging batteries in India and have created a benchmark for safety across sectors. We are proud to see our RapidX batteries form an integral part of 3eco’s fleet operations and are certain that our rapid charging technology would ensure higher utilization of the EVs across multiple use cases thus creating a positive impact on the bottom line of partners such as 3eco Systems.”
Karan Kadaba, Director, 3eco Systems added, “At 3eco, our operations are managed and optimized for maximum utilization over the day, often operating 1.5 shifts in a 24 hours-period, which boosts the vehicles’ revenue-generating potential. Our vehicles have smart electronics integrated with the 35-minute charging capability enabled by the RapidX Log9 batteries to give us maximum flexibility to optimize performance, utilization and cost of operations. Our collaboration with Log9 will allow the customers to have complete advantage of 3ev’s top-tier performance in terms of range, acceleration, braking, as well as multiple points of telemetry for real-time tracking. Access to real-time and targeted data drives our consistent improvement to check all the sub-standard metrics and adopt positive outliers as system-wide best practices. We have plans to expand to 8 more Tier-1 and 2 cities over the next 12 months.”
Log9 and 3eco Systems are on a shared mission of electrification and digitization of the last-mile logistics segment. Their partnership will also in the longer run aim to accelerate setting up of fast-charging infrastructure across the cities of operations.