Planet Electric: Revolutionizing the "V" in EVs

Regular readers of this newsletter will know I am passionate about electric vehicles from manufacturing , to business model innovation to motors to battery manufacturing to analytics to swapping and charging . While these are all crucial, one area which gets almost no attention is the vehicle body itself.

This is where today's start-up Planet Electric, Inc comes in, revolutionizing the vehicle body to drastically improve vehicle cost, range and performance. Planet Electric is founded by two former ISRO scientists ( Gagan Agrawal and Prakhar Agarwal ) who put their experience in materials science to a more worldly problem-electric vehicles. They have engineering a structure with ultralightweight materials that are 1/4 the weight of steel, substantially lowering the weight of the vehicle, and thereby increasing the range (or lowering the battery size and therefore cost for the same range).

What I especially like about this company is they have been unafraid to pivot, from an initial focus on direct-to-consumer to business-to-business. Lightweight vehicles are especially important in the logistics business, where the priority is on margins, and so improving the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) is most relevant. In the future, the lower weight may also help unlock sectors (such as aviation and heavy transport) which are deemed too difficult to electrify.

Their initial product, a 1 ton LCV (Light Commercial Vehicle) will be launched next week in Gurgaon (here to sign up ). They already have over a thousand pre-orders and are planning to start manufacturing at scale early next year.

While lightweight materials for cars have been around for many years, their high cost (eg. carbon fibers) and difficulty in manufacturing at scale has held them back. In particular, Planet Electric has focused on manufacturing materials not just for price and weight but also for durability, repairability, crash resistance, etc.

Planet Electric is also trying to simplify the process by using off-the-shelf components for motors, battery packs, etc, similar to how Chinese manufacturers have standardized parts to drastically reduce costs. However, Planet Electric is planning to source ~80% of their components indigenously, further supporting the Indian ecosystem while maintaining an affordable price range for their logistics partners.

Decarbonizing transport is a massive challenge (~20% of global emissions) which requires many solutions and ecosystem partners working together. While I was already confident in the Indian startup ecosystem's ability to deliver electric motors, batteries, etc., Planet Electric's innovation can drastically bring down costs, improve range and supercharge adoption.

I can't wait to see them grow in India and beyond.