Microsoft said that electric vehicles solutions firm SUN Mobility is using its Azure Cloud as well as other solutions in developing Cloud-connected swappable batteries to put the country on the road to the future.
The batteries as well as the swap stations are connected to the Cloud using Microsoft Azure and numerous built-in solutions like Azure IoT Hub, Azure Data Factory, CosmosDB, Azure Databricks, among others, that transmit battery performance telemetrics back to SUN Mobility.
Customers also have the option of using an app, which connects with their EV’s battery and gives them real-time information of their battery’s performance and the nearest swap station in case the battery is running low.
“We have stations, batteries, and customers that are connected to us. There are over 150 data points coming into our system from each battery,” Maini explains.
With that data, SUN Mobility understands battery utilization, most frequented routes, and peak hours. Using AI and machine learning algorithms, it can predict the potential demand. It can not only optimize its existing network of battery swapping stations, but also plan the location and feasibility of future stations.
An unintended outcome of the battery performance data has enabled SUN Mobility to train EV owners to get more range out of their batteries by tweaking the way they drive.
“After some of our sessions, we’ve seen an improved energy behavior by 15% that can help owners of the vehicles increase their revenue too,” Maini says.
The platform it has been able to create as a result is at the heart of SUN Mobility’s business, which is why it doesn’t see itself as a transport company but rather as a technology company.
“We always knew that the future would be on data, cloud, and analytics, and we had to rethink of how we would look at a platform and we felt that Microsoft was the kind of company we wanted to work with. It was talking of sustainability, looking at data at scale, talking of making an impact, and was creating platforms. All of that resonated with our long-term vision,” Maini says.
“What we also liked was that Microsoft was also able to understand our architecture and help us articulate better how we could achieve our vision and connect that to its products. It also helped us understand things we could do in the future: how to think of IoT, security at chip level etc. Those visions were important.”
So far, SUN Mobility has inked over 10 OEM partnerships, that will enable automobile makers to use its battery tech. These include the likes of Piaggio Commercial, the Italian automobile manufacturer’s Indian arm that makes autorickshaws the kind that Yadav drives, and Ashok Leyland, India’s second largest manufacturer of large commercial vehicles like buses and trucks.
SUN Mobility currently has a network of 50 battery swapping stations spread across 14 cities, with plans to ramp it up to 150 stations in 20 cities by March 2021. It has already partnered with Indian Oil Company, India’s largest oil and gas company, to deploy battery swap modules at their gas stations.
It has also partnered with over a dozen companies that own fleets, including SmartE, India’s largest EV fleet operator for last-mile connectivity in urban areas. SmartE’s e-rickshaws have already run over a million miles powered by SUN Mobility’s battery tech in the last one year alone. What used to be “park and charge” hubs near train stations in New Delhi for traditional e-rickshaws that needed to be plugged have now deployed SUN Mobility’s battery swap stations.
In doing all of this, SUN Mobility is attempting to make the most of its early mover’s advantage in a race that’s about to heat up in the coming years.
