How they make the world's fastest EV chargers | Exponent Energy CEO gives factory tour! BP2B S2 Ep.7

Arun Vinayak 0:00 Exponent is actually in this cusp of energy, automotive, [chuckles] and, and financing, which is very important for commercial vehicles. So we are in three big boy segments.

Speaker 0:11 Building in India, Make in India-

Arun Vinayak 0:12 Yeah

Speaker 0:13 ... is hard the first time.

Arun Vinayak 0:14 Yeah.

Speaker 0:14 And you've chosen to do this twice.

Arun Vinayak 0:17 Yeah, sometimes I, I ask myself why. [laughing] But those times are maybe 5% of the times. 95% of the time, I'm happy. It, it makes no sense to just... At least personally, it, it, it's not exciting to build lab prototypes, right? If you have to actually meaningfully change the world, you have to build crazy tech that actually disrupts. Energy is all about battery technology and charging network, so we are a full-stack energy company. Uh, are we a battery company or are we a charging company? [upbeat music]

Speaker 0:52 Hello, and welcome to the Best Place to Build Podcast. Today, we are at the Exponent Energy factory in Bangalore. Uh, we are with Arun Vinayak. He's the CEO and co-founder of Exponent, also IIT Madras alumnus, batch of 2013. Uh, he was the CPO, chief product officer, for Ather for five, six, seven years. Uh, hello, and welcome to the podcast, Arun.

Arun Vinayak 1:14 Hey, Amit, thanks so much for having me here. Super! Thanks for, thanks for coming to the factory.

Speaker 1:18 Yeah. Um, this is amazing. Thank you so much. Um, I want to start by asking you, what does Exponent do?

Arun Vinayak 1:27 Exponent is fundamentally an energy

Arun Vinayak 1:30 company. Uh, what you think of energy today as oil, tomorrow is batteries plus chargers. So we are building the full-stack energy company, uh, which includes battery technology and charging ecosystem that will power the future of energy, which, and power all the electric vehicles in the future.

Speaker 1:46 Right. And you're focused on the commercial vehicle segment?

Arun Vinayak 1:49 Yeah, we're exclusively focused on commercial vehicle seg- segment. Um, in India, commercial vehicles are just 10% of the vehicles on the ground, but they consume 70% of the energy. So-

Speaker 1:58 Right

Arun Vinayak 1:58 ... uh, that's the biggest energy segment for us to electrify. And, uh, they, they all need ultra-fast... They all need the freedom, flexibility to keep earning, so we built the world's fastest charging tech for them, 15 minutes fast charging.

Speaker 2:12 And this 15 minutes is for, uh, three-wheelers?

Arun Vinayak 2:15 Three-wheelers to buses, so even buses-

Speaker 2:17 Three--

Arun Vinayak 2:18 ... charging 15 minutes.

Speaker 2:19 Okay.

Arun Vinayak 2:19 So we have, like, a one-and-a-half megawatt charger that charges these buses up in 15 minutes.

Speaker 2:25 Okay.

Arun Vinayak 2:25 Uh, it's the world's highest power charger.

Speaker 2:27 You can charge a bus in 15 minutes?

Arun Vinayak 2:29 Yeah, we, we already charge a bus in 15 minutes.

Speaker 2:30 It takes longer to fill fuel in a bus.

Arun Vinayak 2:33 Yeah. I, I-- actually, you're right. I think bus, bus refueling time is longer than 15.

Speaker 2:38 Nice. Very interesting. And we are here, sitting here, right here, so we have this in the background. What is this?

Arun Vinayak 2:44 So this is actually our ePump. Uh, so, like you have a fuel pump today, the-- this will be ePumps, where you can come and recharge like you refuel. Uh, this is actually our intra-city ePump that caters to three-wheelers and LCVs, and the smaller form factors. Uh, that's the connector right there. So you, you go, you connect, and you charge. And, uh, uh, this one as well.

Speaker 3:03 So a, a three-wheeler or a four-wheel, uh, or a maybe a Tata Ace kind of vehicle would come here. That thing would fit in, 15 minutes, you're done?

Arun Vinayak 3:11 Yeah. That's, that's, that's it.

Speaker 3:12 Nice. So cool. So Arun, um, there's a lot to talk about. Uh, I, I want to start with some character development. I read, and correct me if

Speaker 3:23 I'm wrong, is it true that you built a car when you were 16?

Arun Vinayak 3:27 Yes. Uh, yeah, I just generally loved building stuff, uh, when I was young, and my parents were kind enough to let me do things.

Speaker 3:37 Sorry, you have to give us much more detail than this. What is this story? Why were you building a car? [chuckles] And, uh, how did you go about it?

Arun Vinayak 3:44 Yeah, I, I, I think this was around, uh, school time. Uh, I think I got dumped by my girlfriend back then, and I was very angry. And obviously, the next logical thing to do is build a car. [laughing]

Speaker 3:55 [laughing] Uh, sorry, that is... Right.

Arun Vinayak 3:58 Sure. Uh, so this place called Shivajinagar in Bangalore is really cool, so it used to have a lot... It, it's basically a scrap market, but there's also, like, this hidden piece of diamond if you go f- know-- if you know what you're looking for. So it's called Gujri in, in there. And so we used to go pick up all the second-hand engine parts, bearing parts, wheel parts. So, and, uh, I had-- my best friend from school has had a factory... His dad had a factory, so, you know, we had access to all this cutting, grinding, welding machines. So we used this grease monkeying, uh, the crap out of that.

Speaker 4:27 The way you des-

Arun Vinayak 4:28 It was the summer.

Speaker 4:28 The way you're describing it, it reminds me of this Discovery Channel show called, uh, Junkyard Wars.

Arun Vinayak 4:32 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 4:33 Do you remember this show?

Arun Vinayak 4:33 Did, did you watch it growing up as well?

Speaker 4:35 Yes, I did.

Arun Vinayak 4:35 Yeah, yeah, I, I watched it growing up on Discovery Channel, yeah. And, and I, and I think, Shastra, you guys started the-

Speaker 4:40 Yeah

Arun Vinayak 4:40 ... uh, Junkyard Wars.

Speaker 4:40 So, uh, the, the show is that, uh, the, the k- the, the competitors are given a challenge to build something-

Arun Vinayak 4:47 Yeah

Speaker 4:47 ... and they are sent to a scrapyard, like how you're [chuckles] describing Shivajinagar market.

Arun Vinayak 4:50 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4:51 They have to pick up the parts and sort of put it together.

Arun Vinayak 4:53 Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we, we were playing real-life Junkyard Wars, but of course, we had, like, a month of summer to do it and-

Speaker 4:59 Nice

Arun Vinayak 4:59 ... but a lot less budget, so [laughing]

Speaker 5:01 [laughing] Was it something that actually drove?

Arun Vinayak 5:03 Yeah, it drove. It drove. It drove really, really well, actually. It didn't have brakes, so you had to, like, steer left and right aggressively to slow the vehicle down. [chuckles] Uh, but I think that was, uh, like a very distinct memory, where there was a permanent switch on. I said, "This is what I will do the rest of my life" because I was so happy. Like, the joy of building something, driving something you built, was so intrinsic. That was, like, a permanent switch, and I said, "Okay, I will do mobility all my life."

Speaker 5:25 Mm.

Arun Vinayak 5:25 And I think sort of stuck to that since then.

Speaker 5:28 Something's coming to my mind. I'm gonna say it. It's politically super incorrect-

Arun Vinayak 5:31 Right

Speaker 5:31 ... but, uh, who needs girls when you have cars? [laughing]

Arun Vinayak 5:35 [laughing] True that.

Speaker 5:36 Sorry for that, guys. Please don't ba- uh, bake me. Okay, um,

Speaker 5:41 so now you are the f- co-founder and CEO of Exponent Energy. Can you, um, quickly run us through, uh, what Exponent does?

Arun Vinayak 5:51 Yeah. Uh, so, so at Exponent, we're building the future of energy. Um, and with EVs, energy is all about battery technology and charging network, so we are a full-stack energy company.... uh, are we a battery company or are we a charging company? Lancer is both. We think you have to do both to solve energy. You need the best battery technology, powered up with the best charging ecosystem, so the best- the end customer has the best energy experience on a daily basis. So that's what we do.

Speaker 6:22 Nice.

Arun Vinayak 6:22 And, uh, s- step one for this is we build the world's fastest charging tech. Um, so in 15 minutes, we charge the entire vehicles up, whether it's three-wheelers or even buses. Um, and of course-

Speaker 6:33 While walking into your factory, I saw a large bus.

Arun Vinayak 6:35 Yeah.

Speaker 6:35 It's like one of those intercity buses. Are you saying that your tech can charge one of those EV buses in 15 minutes?

Arun Vinayak 6:42 Yeah. So the charger you see next to that is actually the world's highest power charger. It's a 1.5 megawatt charger, um, that's completely built here in India, in our facility. Um, and, uh, yeah, I mean, what's ... See, I think if you look at the last 10, 15 years, EVs have gone from being toys for the rich to now mainstream vehicles.

Speaker 6:59 Mm.

Arun Vinayak 6:59 Uh, if I take the battery out of the equation, your electric vehicle is perfect, right? It's faster, it's sexier, it lasts forever, it's cheaper.

Speaker 7:09 Mm.

Arun Vinayak 7:09 So really,

Arun Vinayak 7:10 what's-- we think what's holding back our adoption is energy, right? Questions like: Where do I charge? How long will it take? Will my battery last? So it's all energy problems and not vehicle problems, right? So we really-- That's why we started Exponent, to say, "What if we just make energy so seamless, so accessible, that, that you will, mm, obviously choose electric?"

Speaker 7:28 That's a fantastic point. I was, uh, reading a commentary which said that we had petrol vehicles earlier, or ICE vehicles, uh, ICE engine vehicles, and now we are moving to EV. But if the opposite had happened, if EV had come first-

Arun Vinayak 7:41 Yeah

Speaker 7:42 ... then somebody driving an EV would never willingly move to ICE because more vibration, more sound-

Arun Vinayak 7:48 Yeah

Speaker 7:49 ... less control on acceleration. It just doesn't make any sense. Um, so I get what you're saying is that, uh, the vehicle is better, but all the things around it are, are, uh, are a bit of a stressful point.

Arun Vinayak 8:03 Yeah, primarily the energy ecosystem. And I think, uh, everyone looks-- vehicles tend to get a lot of the attention because it's sexy. It's a-- I love vehicles, and I've been part of the vehicle-building journey. Uh, but really, we think energy ecosystems makes mobility, right?

Speaker 8:19 Mm.

Arun Vinayak 8:19 Uh, in, in that example, right, there were EVs and there were petrol vehicles, but the energy ecosystem of petroleum just made mobility happen faster there in that direction.

Speaker 8:29 Sure. You're talking about the early 1900 EV vehicles.

Arun Vinayak 8:32 Early 1900, right. So, so if you want to make EVs happen, it's not just about building more vehicles. We have to fundamentally make the energy ecosystem work. Uh, it has to be faster, it has to be cheaper, it has to let you go further, and that's what mobility is all about. You want the freedom and you want the flexibility to do whatever you want, whenever you want, right? Um, and you wanna go faster, you wanna pay lesser to go faster.

Speaker 8:52 Sure.

Arun Vinayak 8:52 You wanna pay lesser to go further, and so on.

Speaker 8:54 I think I have a Ather bike and, uh, obviously, the, the few of us who have EVs personally get asked a lot of questions by other people, you know, "How is this driving it?" The one question that always comes almost upfront is: How long does it take to charge? Um, what about range anxiety, and, uh, whether it shows the true range, and whether it'll just suddenly dip, and things like that. So I, I get what you're saying. How is 15-minute charging a solution to this?

Arun Vinayak 9:22 In, in most cases, um ... And we've done a lot of A/B testing on this, right? So, uh, so, so one of the realities in India is that most people don't even park at home.

Speaker 9:30 Mm.

Arun Vinayak 9:31 Right? Uh, and I'm not talking of the top 5% people buying, I guess-

Speaker 9:38 Sure

Arun Vinayak 9:38 ... the cars and the motorcycles.

Speaker 9:40 You're saying it's parked on the street-

Arun Vinayak 9:41 It's parked on the street

Speaker 9:42 ... or it's parked in a, in a empty lot nearby.

Arun Vinayak 9:44 Exactly, right. Uh, so when I look at, say, someone who owns a auto rickshaw, for example, uh, the first- they actually park it on the road or somewhere. It's generally one to two kilometers away from their house, right? So the first thing they do in the morning is they go fill up CNG. Uh, and it's-- CNG takes an hour, hour and a half, by the way, right? Uh, so, and they sort of do this on a daily basis. And if they want to earn more, then they top up more, and they earn more. So they sort of have this flexi, on-demand energy ecosystem that en- enables them to buy CNG or LPG vehicles, right? So we're-- it's very annoying for someone to go to a public location and wait for an hour, hour and a half, or two hours. So we think one-hour charging, what, what the world considers fast, is not fast enough. Imagine going to a public spot and waiting one hour, twice a day, right? It's, it's, it's, it's just-- it's ridiculous that people are expected to do that. So we said, "What if you can bring this transaction down to as fast as 10 minutes," right? So 15 minutes is a full charge. So generally, our average transaction time, you come in with 20, 30% left. Within 10 minutes, you're out. Of course, we want to go faster. Uh, why 15 minutes? Because our technology today is at 15 minutes. The global average is anywhere between one and a half hours to four hours. Uh, we are working on technology that already allows you to do this in five minutes, uh, which hopefully we'll launch in three, four years from now. Um ...

Speaker 10:59 Mm.

Arun Vinayak 11:00 But yeah, there'll be-- I think how fast is fast enough? It's never gonna be fast enough, and that's the beauty of it, so we wanna, uh, keep going faster.

Speaker 11:07 Sure. So, um, also from the pump point of view, uh, in 15 minutes per vehicle, or 10 minutes per vehicle, literally means, like, five vehicles per hour. Uh, but-- and, and so maybe realistically, about 50 vehicles a day or something like that.

Arun Vinayak 11:23 Yeah, actually, that's a really interesting point that you ... Yeah, uh, bang on, right? Uh, I think you sort of hit on a very important problem. This whole thing started organically from trying to ask a simple question: How do you make charging stations to make money? I mean, if you need charging stations everywhere, then people have to invest in charging stations. And if people have to invest in charging stations, it has to make money. If it has to make money, you have to sell a lot of energy on the same square feet of land.

Speaker 11:49 Mm.

Arun Vinayak 11:50 Um, so today, one of the big problems with charging is, I pay for parking, which real estate is the biggest cost of most businesses within the city. Uh, so I set up a piece of land, I charge two vehicles a day, it's a terrible business, right? I don't make enough money.

Speaker 12:03 Yeah.

Arun Vinayak 12:03 Else, I have to charge you, as end customer, a very premium, uh, surcharge, uh, to sort of compensate. Which again, works for-... I would say premium passenger cars and maybe two-wheelers, where it's more emergency use case. But when we're talking of commercial vehicles, um, they're very price sensitive, uh, and they sort of depend on it on a daily basis. So you've got to get the right price point, uh, which means you can only charge them so much, right, on the upper end. Uh-

Speaker 12:30 Here, you mean price?

Arun Vinayak 12:32 Sorry, price them, [chuckles] uh, so much on the upper end for charging. Uh,

Arun Vinayak 12:36 so the- then you just have to rethink the economics. You just have to sell 10X, 20X more energy on the same square of land, which means you've got to just charge faster, right? You've got to have more throughput. So, so then you've got to rethink the entire energy stack: the chargers, the connectors, the battery pack. How are you transferring that energy faster and faster? So it's a, it's a fundamentally energy transaction problem that you've got to solve.

Speaker 12:57 Fair enough. And, uh, uh, I think the nuance there also, maybe, um, we didn't open with this, but you were, a, a, a, a founding member of Ather. And I'm s- I'm guessing that because you were with Ather for so long as their head of product, you were probably more aware of the charging infrastructure problem because they were also building a charging infrastructure-

Arun Vinayak 13:16 Yeah

Speaker 13:16 ... maybe for a different segment.

Arun Vinayak 13:18 Yeah, yeah. Uh, yeah, so I, I think the, uh, Ather was a really fun journey. Uh, learned a lot on building tech there. Uh...

Speaker 13:26 Maybe we can come back to the Ather journey. Let's stick with this 15-minute charging journey. Um, I understand that you're basically pouring energy into the battery. I've read what you have said before. Um, I-- What are the engineering challenges of, um, fast charging? Like, why doesn't every battery charge fast?

Arun Vinayak 13:46 Right. Uh, so today, fundamentally, people approach energy transactions the way they approached... People approach energy from the way they approached petroleum, right? So you have charge point operators thinking their job is set up chargers on the ground, uh, and you have battery manufacturers and vehicle manufacturers figuring stuff out on the vehicle, right?

Speaker 14:06 Mm.

Arun Vinayak 14:06 Um, now, this decoupled approach worked in the petroleum world, right? In fact, if you look at petroleum, um, the, the hard bit about energy there is to find petroleum, and actually extract it, refine it, distribute it, right? The transaction is super easy. It's a simple, dumb, mechanical process.

Speaker 14:23 Yeah.

Arun Vinayak 14:23 So you have one nozzle that can easily just dump liquid into a can, which is also a fairly dumb can. Um, and it can do it for a bus or a two-wheeler or a three-wheeler or passenger car. So it's like decoupled ecosystems.

Speaker 14:35 Yeah. I mean, at max, you need one sensor to say that the can is full.

Arun Vinayak 14:39 Yeah, which is also a vehicle-side problem, right? So the petrol guy-- Oh, sure, you can also use the petrol nozzle. Uh, fair, right? Uh, but there's fundamentally no interaction between-

Speaker 14:50 Yeah

Arun Vinayak 14:50 ... the deep interaction between the two ecosystems. But you bring all this to EV, right? Actually, the upstream is solved. There's energy all around us. There's energy in the world right now, right? Uh, now, how do I take energy from the wall to the vehicle? It's actually a midstream problem, it's a transaction problem. And by definition, transaction problems are two-sided problems, right? So to solve rapid charging, it's not about saying, "Well, I, I can build a battery," or, "I can build a charger." Each of, each of it by itself is useless. So you have to actually build the entire energy stack that helps you transact energy, really. It's like Visa, right? Visa for Money. It's about credit card and POS machines. You've got to build both, uh, to manage faster and more seamless transactions. Um, so, so just like money went from hard cash to electronic payments, energy is going from dumb molecules you pour and burn, to s- to electrons, right? So the energy transactions and energy management systems are super key. Uh, so the-- so I think fundamentally, it's about companies starting to think full stack that's needed to even approach this from a rapid charging... to, to achieve rapid charging.

Speaker 15:48 Okay, I hear you. You are saying that fast charging means that the, the socket in the wall, um, the, the infrastructure there or the, or the equipment there, and the thing in your battery pack, they have to talk to each other, and there has to be some kind of intelligent exchange? Uh-

Arun Vinayak 16:04 Yes.

Speaker 16:04 From a very fundamental point of view, if I just... They-- Suppose there's no in- intelligent exchange, and I just turn the knob

Speaker 16:12 up-

Arun Vinayak 16:12 Right. [chuckles]

Speaker 16:13 ... and just pass more current into the battery, what happens? I mean, I have a sense of what happens, but can you give me a-

Arun Vinayak 16:18 Yeah, two things happen. First, you would kill the cell. Uh, so what you're charging is... At the end of the day, battery packs have hundreds of cells. Uh, today, it's lithium-ion. It could be any cell, uh, right? Uh, but cells are cans with chemicals, right? They have an electrode, uh, they have, uh, cathode, anode, electrolyte. We've all read about this.

Speaker 16:35 Sure.

Arun Vinayak 16:36 Uh, so-

Speaker 16:36 Cathode, anode, electrolyte.

Arun Vinayak 16:37 Right. And so you just, like-- And it's a bunch of electrochemical reactions.

Speaker 16:40 Mm.

Arun Vinayak 16:40 Right? So if you just, like, amp it up blindly, you will destroy-- The, the chemical reaction inside would go berserk, and you'd have a thing, bunch of issues. In lithium-ion cells, or in any ionic cell, you have something called crowding, anodic crowding and anodic plating, where if you just, like, up the current, you would increase the rate of reactions, right? Uh, and you'd increase the entropy inside the cell.

Speaker 16:59 Mm.

Arun Vinayak 17:00 Uh, and more entropy means more chaos, which means more fracture zones, which means-

Speaker 17:04 Wait, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. You're moving too fast for me. There's a chemical in... There is a reaction, there's a reversible reaction inside the cell.

Arun Vinayak 17:12 Yes.

Speaker 17:12 One side of the reaction gives energy out.

Arun Vinayak 17:15 Yes.

Speaker 17:15 And if I pour energy in, the reaction goes in the reverse and stores that energy-

Arun Vinayak 17:19 Perfect

Speaker 17:20 ... for me to draw out.

Arun Vinayak 17:21 Perfect. So the drawing out is easy for a cell, 'cause you're actually going from a high potential energy zone to a low potential energy zone.

Speaker 17:27 Yeah.

Arun Vinayak 17:27 So you're relaxing the cell. So when you're driving the vehicle, you're actually relaxing the cell.

Speaker 17:31 Yeah.

Arun Vinayak 17:31 So you can hardly damage the cell while driving.

Speaker 17:34 Mm.

Arun Vinayak 17:34 Right? But charging, where you're sort of s- stressing the cell out-

Speaker 17:37 Mm

Arun Vinayak 17:37 ... uh, the, the other side reaction that you're talking about, that's what really affects the cell life.

Speaker 17:42 Okay.

Arun Vinayak 17:42 Right? Now, you can do it, and doing that basically means you are in-- When you go cathode, anode, when you charge a cell, you have lithium ions that go from the cathode, swim across, and the anode absorbs them and stores them.

Speaker 17:53 Mm.

Arun Vinayak 17:54 Uh, right? Now, the faster you charge, there's more lithium ions. It's just linear, right? Uh, and they're sort of all bombarding the anode, right? Uh, so it's all like a traffic jam, uh, but there's only so much absorption capability on the anode.

Speaker 18:07 Okay.

Arun Vinayak 18:08 So you have something called lithium crowding, which is a cell saying, "Hey, I'm stressed."

Speaker 18:11 Mm.

Arun Vinayak 18:11 And if you're continuously stressing the cell out at this point of time, you have something called lithium plating.... where these lithium ions just give up and they deposit themselves on the surface of the anode.

Speaker 18:20 Okay.

Arun Vinayak 18:20 Uh, where this is a irreversible reaction.

Speaker 18:22 Mm.

Arun Vinayak 18:23 Right? So every reaction in a cell should be reversible, [lips smack] but lithium plating is a irreversible reaction.

Speaker 18:28 And then the, if the lithium plates, first of all, lithium gets unavailable?

Arun Vinayak 18:31 Yes.

Speaker 18:31 And secondly, it'll s- block the surface of the anode wherever it plates, right?

Arun Vinayak 18:36 Yes. So you lose active anode. So if you look at most lithium ion degradation curves, they behave well until there's a knee point, right? At some point of time, things-- you have some amount of plating, and then you sort of seed more plating, which then snowballs quickly out of control.

Speaker 18:50 Sure, then it goes down.

Arun Vinayak 18:52 Yes.

Speaker 18:52 Okay, understood. And, uh, what about, what is the heat equation in this?

Arun Vinayak 18:56 Heat is outcome, right? So the faster you charge, uh, I square R. Uh, right? So more current means exponentially more heat. Uh, but that's the outcome, right? Um, uh, cooling-- just blindly cooling a cell and charging it fast, you would still destroy the cell, 'cause the internal reactions we spoke about will still continue to happen.

Speaker 19:14 Okay. So one challenge is that the, the, the charging of the cell produces a lot of heat. You have to remove the heat.

Arun Vinayak 19:20 That's the outcome. That's a secondary problem.

Speaker 19:22 Okay.

Arun Vinayak 19:22 The primary problem is to charge the cell without killing it, which is the anodic problem. It's sort of like processor tech, so you have to make... In processor, you have processors that need to be designed to go faster, but then you also need equally good thermal systems to allow the processor to be fast.

Speaker 19:36 Mm.

Arun Vinayak 19:36 Right? So you sort of need to build the core BMS, the charging algorithms, et cetera, that actually allow you to charge fast without destroying the cell. But then, if you don't have thermals, this will just be sort of in a lab where there's nice AC. It won't actually work in the field. So you need to then ensure that this happens every single time out there in the, in the field.

Speaker 19:55 Understood. So how does Exponent solve these problems?

Arun Vinayak 19:58 Yeah. So, so we have, uh-- because we build full stack, um, and, and compare it to, let's say, an open source protocol, where today charger and batteries will be by two different people. Uh, the charger is blindly dumping energy on the battery, right? This is called CCCV, just constant current, constant voltage-

Speaker 20:15 Yeah

Arun Vinayak 20:15 ... charging, where because there is no deeper interaction between the battery and charger, um-

Speaker 20:21 Constant current for a while, and then con- constant voltage for a while.

Arun Vinayak 20:24 Exactly. So what you're doing is you're just betting on probability-

Speaker 20:27 Mm

Arun Vinayak 20:27 ... right? You're just bombarding the anode with the same amount of lithium ions, 'cause that's what the lab test tells you to do it. But the cell, every single cell is different. Every single battery is different. The battery on day zero is different. Two years later, the battery is different. But you're still bombarding it with the same amount of lithium ions.

Speaker 20:43 Sure.

Arun Vinayak 20:43 As-

Speaker 20:43 I've done some tests in the lab. I broadly know that this battery works like this. I don't need a closed-loop system. I have an open-loop system. I'll just run the same thing. Hopefully, it'll be... Probabilistically, it'll be the same. It'll behave similarly.

Arun Vinayak 20:55 Hundred percent, but it's not.

Speaker 20:56 Okay.

Arun Vinayak 20:57 Right? And the worst bit is a CV, which is a trickle charge state at the end, where you act-- the charger actually holds current voltage across the cell and lets the cell decide how much to eat. So actually, the cell, through osmosis, sort of, uh, slowly, the current will keep decaying, and sort of the cell saturates to a point, and then it switches off charging.

Speaker 21:16 Okay.

Arun Vinayak 21:16 But the cell is a fairly dumb being, right?

Speaker 21:20 Mm.

Arun Vinayak 21:20 So you'll actually... In the CCCV approach-

Speaker 21:21 I'm, I'm thinking of, like, lots of lithium minions-

Arun Vinayak 21:24 Yeah. [chuckles]

Speaker 21:24 ... walking from this side to that side. [chuckles]

Arun Vinayak 21:26 Yeah, like hungry lithium minions, right? Just walking around. Uh, it's like you let the cell decide how much to eat, it'll always overeat, and it'll always oversaturate, always kill itself. So the CCCV approach is a very probabilistic approach because you're depending on material science and a bunch of cell data, and it's like you said, it's open loop, which, which is a great way to look at it. Um, and so the industry norm is just go slow, because if you don't know much, you go slow, right? Like, that's the way to run. Of course, with this sort of blind approach, if you just amp up, dial up the current, you would just-- the amount of entropy would be so much that it would just destroy the cell very quickly.

Speaker 22:01 Understood.

Arun Vinayak 22:01 Right? So we're going from this to a deterministic method, uh, where we real-time understand what's happening with every cell. Uh, we are, we are able to predict very accurately if lithium crowding is starting to happen, which is a precursor to lithium plating. Uh, we are able to dynamically change current for every cell real-time. We're able to reverse current, if needed, uh, s- reduce current or switch off current-

Speaker 22:23 Okay

Arun Vinayak 22:23 ... whatever is needed. Uh, and this is enabled by, A, this accuracy with which we're sensing, the response time with which we're able to react, and of course, something called a, uh, virtual model, which is like, think of it as a digital twin, uh, for every cell that we store on our cloud. Uh, so every time we're charging, we're actually learning about a particular cell in a particular battery pack. So it's not just us categorizing a cell in a lab, it's actually then further managing every cell real time through a closed-loop function in the field.

Speaker 22:53 Nice. So, uh, so, so you're-- firstly, you're converting that open-loop charging to a closed-loop charging?

Arun Vinayak 22:58 Yeah.

Speaker 22:58 Uh, there's, uh-- you're sensing very fast, you're responding very fast, and the, the effect is the cha- uh, the, the, the closed-loop system is changing the current that's going into the charging at any point.

Arun Vinayak 23:10 Yeah.

Speaker 23:10 And therefore, you can just increase the current that's going and charge in a much faster time.

Arun Vinayak 23:15 Exactly. So we go-- we're able to go fast and not break things because we know what's happening.

Speaker 23:19 Nice.

Arun Vinayak 23:20 That's it.

Speaker 23:20 Damn! Cool. Um, what about the heat?

Arun Vinayak 23:23 Yeah.

Speaker 23:23 The secondary problem that you said.

Arun Vinayak 23:24 Yeah. So because we do this, the first part well, you generate a lot of heat, and going from four-hour charging to 15-minute charging is roughly 16 times more current, but it's 256 times more heat.

Speaker 23:35 Mm.

Arun Vinayak 23:36 Right? Uh-

Speaker 23:37 Square of the square of.

Arun Vinayak 23:38 Right. Uh, and the other, the other thing that people don't realize about, uh... There, there's actually a global disruption in cooling for automotive, right? So until now, everything that you cooled, let's say processors were at 70 to 80 degree Celsius. Engines were at 110 degree Celsius, uh, but your ambient is 45, 50. So regular liquid cooling sort of works for all of this. Uh, EV batteries actually need HVAC systems, 'cause you actually wanna keep your cell between 25 to 35, maybe max 40 degree Celsius. Uh, but your ambient is at 45, 50 degree Celsius, right? So you have a negative temperature gradient.

Speaker 24:15 Sorry, just to understand this, you're saying if I'm cooling an engine, an engine is anyway at what? Hundred and ten, 120 degrees.... ambient is 40 degrees.

Arun Vinayak 24:23 Yeah.

Speaker 24:24 If I just run water through the engine-

Arun Vinayak 24:27 To a ra-

Speaker 24:27 -side-

Arun Vinayak 24:28 To a radiator?

Speaker 24:29 Through to a radiator, and push air on the radiator, because there's a temperature gradient from 110 to 40, it'll anyway move.

Arun Vinayak 24:38 Yeah.

Speaker 24:38 But in an EV, you want that battery pack to be at?

Arun Vinayak 24:42 25 to 40.

Speaker 24:43 Okay, so there's no temperature gradient working there.

Arun Vinayak 24:45 There's a negative temperature gradient, yeah.

Speaker 24:47 Okay, so you definitely need a?

Arun Vinayak 24:49 Heat pump-

Speaker 24:50 Uh

Arun Vinayak 24:50 -or HVAC system.

Speaker 24:52 Okay.

Arun Vinayak 24:52 Right? Uh, which are super expensive and very bulky. Uh, right, uh, so if you look at the Tesla HVAC system, which is actually on the vehicle, it costs maybe $1,500, roughly one and a half lakhs to two lakhs. Here, the vehicles themselves cost two and a half, three lakhs.

Speaker 25:06 Mm.

Arun Vinayak 25:06 Uh, right? Um, uh, I think a bunch of, um, global passenger car vehicles, uh, almost manufacturers, the biggest problem is actually packaging HVAC systems on the vehicle.

Speaker 25:19 Okay.

Arun Vinayak 25:19 Uh, because it consumes a lot of power, consumes a lot of volume and weight for the, for the vehicle. But what we realized about India is pe- is that these vehicles don't actually heat up while driving at all, right? Uh, they only heat up while charging, 'cause in India, you're driving... Especially commercial vehicles, they drive at such a low speed, uh, right? So your average C-rate, in batteries, we, we, we call something called C-rate, right? So generally, while driving, you're taking four hours, five hours to discharge a battery. It's a very, very little heat.

Speaker 25:52 Mm.

Arun Vinayak 25:52 Uh, but you're charging it up in 15 minutes. Uh, so we said, "Why have these HVAC systems on the vehicle at all? Have them while-- You only need them while charging." So we sort of move this entire HVAC to the charger. So using a-- When you connect that, that connector, right? So this-

Speaker 26:05 This is your charger, 15-minute charger.

Arun Vinayak 26:06 One of our chargers, right? So when you connect that connector, the system actually obviously has data connectivity, power connectivity, but also fluid connectivities. We actually make a-- We have a fluid mating, uh, so it actually pumps in coolant from the charger into the battery, cools the battery down. Uh, we also have heating, so we can heat the battery up or cool the battery down, based on what's needed. Uh, let's say you're in, um, Delhi, and you're five degrees Celsius, we heat you up. Uh, so yeah, that's-

Speaker 26:31 This is amazing. I mean, thank you for taking the patience and explaining all of this.

Arun Vinayak 26:35 No.

Speaker 26:35 Very fascinated that that one terminal can, um, communicate on data, fluid, and, um, electricity.

Arun Vinayak 26:43 Right.

Speaker 26:43 That's damn cool!

Arun Vinayak 26:45 No, so-

Speaker 26:45 Um, [clear throat]

Speaker 26:47 I heard your colleague say that you talk a lot about engineering without economics is just a science project.

Arun Vinayak 26:52 Yeah.

Speaker 26:53 So now we've come to the engineering part. We heard the engineering part.

Arun Vinayak 26:55 Yeah.

Speaker 26:56 Can you just elaborate on this philosophy, but also talk to us, too, about the economics of this?

Arun Vinayak 27:03 Yeah, I mean, um... Yeah, I, I think it's, it's, uh, it, it makes no sense to just-- at least personally, it, it, it's not exciting to build lab prototypes, right? If you have to actually meaningfully change the world, you have to build crazy tech that actually disrupts performance, disrupts pricing, uh, disrupts accessibility, so everyone can have better tech in their hands. Let's look at any technology, right? It disrupts not because it's cool, because it actually becomes accessible-

Speaker 27:36 Mm

Arun Vinayak 27:36 ... right, to everyone, like cell phones, laptops, whatever, right? E- everything we've seen in the last 30 years, 40 years. Similarly with EVs, it's not just about building cool EVs. I think we just wanna make EVs accessible to everyone, and so it's always engineering, yes, but then engineering plus economics, uh, has to flow. So all our engineering decisions are linked to economics, right?

Speaker 27:54 Mm.

Arun Vinayak 27:55 Um, for example, this whole HVAC thing we spoke about. Uh, the reason we're able-- the reason we-- It's much harder from engineering perspective to do this, uh, but it's the only way to make economics work in India. Uh, if you want to deliver rapid charging tech to a three-wheeler in India, uh, you have to do this, else the three-wheeler will just become so expensive that no one would be able to own it. At the same time, the three-wheeler does need rapid charging for them to be able to earn as much money as they want. Uh, so need-- They need the performance, but they can't afford the tech in a conventional manner, so you then have to rethink your engineering to make it accessible.

Speaker 28:29 I get what you're saying. From a very basic point of view, for a three-wheeler EV or a, or a Tata ACE EV or a truck EV-

Arun Vinayak 28:38 Even a bus, right? Yeah.

Speaker 28:38 Even a bus EV, logically, it makes a lot of sense that batteries are cheaper than petrol, um, because you can say battery per kilometer or unit cost per kilometer here, and there you have the mileage-

Arun Vinayak 28:53 Yeah

Speaker 28:53 ... and you can compare that. But if your commercial vehicle is down for two hours a day-

Arun Vinayak 28:57 Yeah

Speaker 28:57 ... and you are sitting next to it, waiting for it to charge, then you've lost two hours of your working time.

Arun Vinayak 29:02 Yes.

Speaker 29:03 Um, so if you factor that calculation in, then it, it doesn't make that much sense. But if you add 15-minute charging or 10-minute charging-

Arun Vinayak 29:11 Yeah

Speaker 29:12 ... uh, then that suddenly becomes a much better proposition. Is that the core of the argument?

Arun Vinayak 29:16 Absolutely. And, uh, it's not about just time, uh, and a pure just calculating two hours of downtime. Uh, it's, it's the freedom to run operations-

Speaker 29:26 Mm. Yeah

Arun Vinayak 29:26 ... right, which is sort of priceless, right? So today, if you look at within the city, uh, when you book a cab-

Speaker 29:32 Yeah

Arun Vinayak 29:32 ... uh, you, you don't know where the cab is. The cab driver doesn't know where the next pickup or drop is, right?

Speaker 29:37 Mm.

Arun Vinayak 29:37 Um, uh, so very few operations and logistics are fixed route, fixed time.

Speaker 29:43 Yeah.

Arun Vinayak 29:43 In India, as well, the most, most operation, most logistics in India is very ad hoc, uh, right?

Speaker 29:47 Yeah.

Arun Vinayak 29:48 They need a lot of freedom, flexibility. They need on-demand logistics, which is the big word, which means you also need on-demand energy, right?

Speaker 29:53 Yeah.

Arun Vinayak 29:54 To power on-demand logistics, right?

Speaker 29:56 Yeah, I mean, like, even a EV, EV personal vehicle owner, uh, not a commercial vehicle, but, like, say, a two-wheeler or four-wheeler, has had this experience where you go to a charging station, realize there's a queue there-

Arun Vinayak 30:05 Yeah

Speaker 30:05 ... and the first guy's got to take an hour, and the next guy's got to take an hour. So you are going to get your energy only after three or four hours.

Arun Vinayak 30:12 Exactly.

Speaker 30:12 And-

Arun Vinayak 30:13 Queuing becomes a big problem, yeah.

Speaker 30:14 Queuing becomes a problem.

Arun Vinayak 30:15 Yeah.

Speaker 30:16 Also, and, uh, also, when you're doing intercity, sometimes there's a power cut at one of the stations, which means that there were three stations in that route-... but two are down, so they, they effectively has become one station, so the queuing problem becomes much worse.

Arun Vinayak 30:29 Exactly.

Speaker 30:30 Um-

Arun Vinayak 30:30 So all of this gets solved when you have faster transactions.

Speaker 30:33 Yeah.

Arun Vinayak 30:33 Uh, and the reason we speak about engineering economics, coming back to that, is, is we f- have an exclusive focus on commercial vehicles, right? And, and i- the reason I keep speaking about that is, that is India's energy problem, right? Commercial vehicles are just 10% of the vehicles on the ground today, but they consume 70% of India's on-road energy, right? So when you talk about energy resilience as a country, or you talk about sustainability as from an environmental perspective, uh, or from our point of view, just, hey, as an energy company, where do we sell the most energy to? From all three angles, it's all about commercial vehicles, where the economics really are the driving factor to change.

Speaker 31:05 Mm.

Arun Vinayak 31:05 It's not the coolness or, um, the fact that it's a cool new tech. It-- None of that matters. It has to result in solid economics.

Speaker 31:14 Sure.

Arun Vinayak 31:14 Um, so that's why the focus on engineering economics is a lot more important for Exponent because of the commercial, uh, vehicle focus.

Speaker 31:22 Thank you so much for taking us through

Speaker 31:24 this. What is the size you're at now?

Arun Vinayak 31:27 We're at, like, number of employees-wise?

Speaker 31:29 Number of, uh, chargers on-

Arun Vinayak 31:31 Stations. Yeah, okay. So we are-- We're a two hundred member team now. We have one fifty chargers on the ground. We have over two thousand plus vehicles on the ground as part of our first pilot. Uh, and these are all three-wheelers where we tested our technology, sort of refined it, perfected it. Um, we're now expanding. This is in just-

Speaker 31:47 So now-

Arun Vinayak 31:48 One and a half cities

Speaker 31:48 ... i- i- in Bangalore, which I'm familiar with, there'll be, what? Like, one hundred and fifty, two hundred e-pumps?

Arun Vinayak 31:53 So one hundred, one fifty pumps across two cities, so in Bangalore, we'll probably see sixty, sixty-five e-pumps now.

Speaker 31:57 Sixty-five e-pumps. Nice. That's actually a lot to-

Arun Vinayak 32:01 Yeah

Speaker 32:01 ... from a commercial vehicle point of view. I, I'm guessing there'll be fewer CNG pumps.

Arun Vinayak 32:05 Yeah, actually, in Bangalore, there's only sixty LPG stations. We have some eighty, ninety CNG stations, so we're almost in the same ballpark.

Speaker 32:10 Same ballpark.

Arun Vinayak 32:11 And we plan to get to one fifty e-, uh, charging stations in Bangalore itself soon. Like, all of Bangalore, all brands, all types of fuels put together, ICE fuels put together, there are only, like, three hundred to four hundred petrol stations-

Speaker 32:24 Okay

Arun Vinayak 32:24 ... and CNG stations.

Speaker 32:25 Very interesting. So that, that penetration is actually a lot.

Arun Vinayak 32:27 Yeah.

Speaker 32:28 Um, you also have some amazing investors. You've raised a good amount of money. So do you want to share a little bit about that?

Arun Vinayak 32:35 Yeah. We've raised, uh, forty-four million dollars to date, uh, from a bunch of investors across a few rounds. Starting from early-stage investors like, uh, Eones, Three One Four, Advantage, uh, who sort of led the early rounds, uh, back when there wasn't really any tech to talk about, or just all a paper plan. So bet on us through the rounds. Um, we had Lightspeed invest in us when this technology was, well, maybe just a concept, and have sort of doubled down with us every round since then. Uh, we recently had Eight Roads and TDK. Well, I say recent, but it's been a year, year and a half plus, um, who also led our Series B. Uh, Eight Roads is, um, from, from the, from the Fidelity Group, and TDK is a global investor.

Speaker 33:22 Mm.

Arun Vinayak 33:22 It's a global company, of course, uh, from Japan. So we've-

Speaker 33:25 I saw your, uh, Series B announcement video.

Arun Vinayak 33:29 Right. From horses

Arun Vinayak 33:31 [horse neighing] to bikes [motorbike revving] to cars [car passing by] and to cabs. [upbeat music] Mobility has always been about freedom and accessibility. With every generation, it's gotten faster and more affordable, helping more people go further. So why should EVs be any different? Sure, they drive faster, [motorbike revving] but they suffer from slow charging that completely kills freedom and holds them back. [upbeat music] Kinda like horses. [horse neighing]

Speaker 34:01 [chuckles] Really cool.

Arun Vinayak 34:02 Oh, thanks. We have... [chuckles] Yeah, we have a B2C brand team in a B2B company, so [chuckles] they do some stuff.

Speaker 34:07 [laughing] I saw that you had a horse come into your-

Arun Vinayak 34:10 Yeah, yeah

Speaker 34:11 ... video as a-

Arun Vinayak 34:12 We actually wanted to put a real horse, but, uh, there were some, uh-- Apparently, the-- You can't shoot animals in a, in a, in, uh, without all the approvals.

Speaker 34:22 Okay.

Arun Vinayak 34:22 So it was a quite a fun experience shooting it.

Speaker 34:24 Okay. Um, [clears throat] this is great. Uh, I want to go back a little bit, um, but just to cover all the finer nuances here. Um, I think, uh, we spoke about battery chemistry, we spoke about the engineering limits,

Speaker 34:40 we spoke about BMS. Um, I have a question here, which is mainly from my understanding: What is the difference between batteries for phones, laptops, two-wheelers, three-wheelers, four-wheelers, and trucks? Like, is there a big difference? Is it just a scale thing?

Arun Vinayak 34:55 Uh, huge, actually. I think that's a great question. So i- i-- It comes down to what you... Sure, at the end of the day, it's, it's maybe lithium-ion cells. In a simplistic fashion, you can say it's all-- core technology remains the same. You have cathode, uh, cathode, anode, and electrolyte. But what you're building towards, the metrics you care about, are fundamentally very different. The product attributes you want from all these categories are very different. Um, for example, phones and laptops, you care about energy density. So the sort of innovation happening there is more on the material science to give you more hours with a lighter battery and a thinner battery. So volumetric density, weight density matters a lot.

Speaker 35:36 Mm.

Arun Vinayak 35:36 You don't care about charge time as much, 'cause you are able to charge it from any socket to-- It's-- You're able to carry the phone with you. So you are taking your phone to energy, as against needing the energy to come to the phone. Um, you don't care about life as much. Your average consumer electronic product is owned for two years, three years. Um, so you don't really care about life beyond that. Um, if you go to passenger cars or two-wheelers, again, energy density matters a little bit more than commercial vehicles, but less than consumer electronics. Um, you care about charge time, again, you don't care about life as much. Uh, but if you go to commercial vehicles, you don't care about volumetric or weight density as much. You, you really want a battery that lasts eight years, ten years, fifteen years. 'Cause for commercial vehicles, it's an asset, the residual value, the life of it really matters. You care a- about charge time a lot.

Speaker 36:23 Mm.

Arun Vinayak 36:24 Um, consumers like you and I probably park our vehicle at home and charge at home.

Speaker 36:28 Mm.

Arun Vinayak 36:28 Uh, so we think there's going to be a global dichotomy in charging, either-... but people who can charge at home, park at home, charge at home, will always do that, which is great. It's the cheapest and the best way to do it. But everyone else will want ultra-fast charging. They'll want sub 10 minutes. There's no world where you go to a public spot every day and wait for an hour, we think. It's sort of like e-commerce, where, you know, there's, uh, same-day delivery is now dead, right? Either you're okay for a cheap three-day delivery or you want an ultra-fast 15-minute delivery. Uh, we think similarly with energy, either you're okay to wait at home every day, uh, but we think a bulk of people will want that ultra-fast charging. That's the fundamental-

Speaker 37:06 Nice.

Arun Vinayak 37:07 cemos.

Speaker 37:07 Thank you so much. Um, okay, uh, so, uh, I, I think you're giving us a factory tour later-

Arun Vinayak 37:14 Yeah

Speaker 37:15 ... so we'll learn a little bit more later. Uh, let's move back now. Uh, y- you're a founding member of Ather-

Arun Vinayak 37:21 Yeah

Speaker 37:21 ... which is amazing. Uh, and I want to hear a little bit about that, but let's rewind to that, uh, story where you're a JEE student and you're just getting into IIT. So, um, [chuckles] after having built a car in your 11th and 12th, uh, how were your years at IIT like, and, uh, how did you land up in Ather?

Arun Vinayak 37:41 Yeah, so I, I think that, uh... I think, I think my parents conned me a little

Arun Vinayak 37:45 bit. They said, "Oh, if you want to keep building this car, you should study and get into IIT." So, uh, I was, uh, I extremely pivoted hard into sort of working hard to crack the JEE, uh, which worked out well. Uh, got into Madras for mechanical. I was sure, like, I would do only mechanical engineering, because I will build vehicles. [chuckles] That was a very simplistic thought process. But then, uh, realized IIT is so academic, right? Got in, and the first year was a complete shock-

Speaker 38:13 Yeah

Arun Vinayak 38:13 ... and they were teaching us quantum mechanics and-

Speaker 38:15 Oh, my God!

Arun Vinayak 38:16 Yeah, and I didn't understand anything. And, uh, and I was sort of-

Speaker 38:20 I feel like Schrödinger equation is still-

Arun Vinayak 38:22 [laughing]

Speaker 38:22 ... one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life.

Arun Vinayak 38:24 It's traumatic, man. [laughing]

Speaker 38:26 Yeah.

Arun Vinayak 38:26 So, so I mean, I, I can be academic if I want to, but, like, I was real rebelled then. I said, "This isn't like..." I wanted to build stuff. Uh, and that's when this beautiful thing happened, where we discovered CFI, right?

Speaker 38:38 Mm.

Arun Vinayak 38:38 I think it's the best thing that's happened to me. Um, the best thing that happened to a lot of us who are now founders in deep tech.

Speaker 38:44 Mm.

Arun Vinayak 38:44 Um, it was this safe space for all of us, where there were just students everywhere building cool stuff. There was no objective of success. It was just objective of building.

Speaker 38:53 Mm.

Arun Vinayak 38:53 Um, there was... I- it was not crazy amount of money, but back then, as a student, it was a lot of money. It was, like, 80,000 bucks, one lakh to build a project was, was, was amazing.

Speaker 39:03 Mm.

Arun Vinayak 39:03 Right? You didn't even know how to plan a project that required one lakh, right? So you were still thinking 8,000 rupees, 10,000 rupees to build a prototype. So that completely changed our mindset in how do you prototype, how do you build? And we make this... Pretty much every project out of CFI is a failure technically, but I think you will see so many cool success stories that have come out of the same, uh, team built there.

Speaker 39:26 Yeah. So, uh, the ones that are popular now is, of course, Ather, Exponent, um, HyperVerge, maybe. A bunch of companies which came around in that, uh, which... where the students started working in CFI around the 2010 to 2014, '15 period. It's been 10 years, so they're-

Arun Vinayak 39:42 Yeah

Speaker 39:42 ... very visible now.

Arun Vinayak 39:43 Yeah, a- absolutely. And I think what, what, uh, IIT has done with, with CFI, and then back it up with now the research park and the incubation facility. So it's like this nice graduation path for you to get into college, get messy in smaller projects in CFI, start thinking startups, start incubating. I think that the whole ecosystem is so good, and it's probably the only place that's consistently churning out deep tech companies, and yeah, it's-

Speaker 40:08 Yeah, best place to build.

Arun Vinayak 40:09 Best Place To Build. [chuckles]

Speaker 40:10 A- at least for Bob the Builder kind of people- [chuckles]

Arun Vinayak 40:12 Yeah

Speaker 40:12 ... who need to build- [chuckles]

Arun Vinayak 40:14 Yeah

Speaker 40:14 ... compulsively.

Arun Vinayak 40:15 To, to be happy. Uh, but, but, yeah, absolutely. So that's where I met,

Arun Vinayak 40:20 uh... I think CFI was also a place where I met Swapnil, uh, who, who was co-founder at, at Ather. Uh, uh, we-- so, like, a bunch of guys, bunch of guys like Anand. So many people who are at Ather/Exponent are all original team members of the Raftaar team.

Speaker 40:35 Mm.

Arun Vinayak 40:35 Uh-

Speaker 40:36 Raftaar is the-

Arun Vinayak 40:36 Team Raftaar, yeah. So... [laughing]

Speaker 40:39 Raftaar is the, uh, racing team.

Arun Vinayak 40:41 Yeah, Raftaar-

Speaker 40:41 Student racing team

Arun Vinayak 40:42 ... Raftaar is a student racing team from IITM. Uh, and, uh, so we used to build these open-wheeled race cars, super fast race cars, actually, uh, and compete globally in Formula 1 tracks. Um, and, uh, we used to, uh, we... Uh, 2010 was the first time we went. Uh, that was the first time we represented IIT Madras. Uh, we went to Silverstone, UK, and we got our-

Speaker 41:04 Silverstone!

Arun Vinayak 41:04 ... asses whooped. Sorry, can I say that, like?

Speaker 41:06 Yeah, you can say, "Asses whooped."

Arun Vinayak 41:08 Okay. [chuckles]

Speaker 41:09 But Silverstone- [chuckles]

Arun Vinayak 41:10 Yeah, yeah

Speaker 41:11 ... it's a very, very-

Arun Vinayak 41:12 The Holy Grail of racing.

Speaker 41:13 Yeah.

Arun Vinayak 41:13 Yeah. Uh, but it was... S- See, like, honestly, we went there, uh, with, "Oh, we are from IIT Madras. We're smart kids and all," right? And we went there, and, like, tier two, tier three colleges there were whooping us. Uh, right, uh, they just knew how to build, right? Uh, maybe they didn't know the Schrödinger equation as much, but they knew how to build, and that was like this solid wake-up call. I think both Swapnil and I took that very personally back then.

Speaker 41:37 Yeah.

Arun Vinayak 41:37 Then we said, "Shit, man, India doesn't build," right? And it was all IT people everywhere, and there was just software, software, software. Uh, the biggest, the smartest people in industry back then were getting into consultancies and software companies and, uh, FMCG and banking.

Speaker 41:54 Still, by the way.

Arun Vinayak 41:54 Still... No, I think it's changing. I think it's changing. Uh, but so it was a, it was this very- It was a second switch. I think switch one was, I will change mobility in '16. Switch two was at, at that 20... I remember that moment because it was

Arun Vinayak 42:07 like, it was a wake-up call to say we should build hard, some product in India. That was the... I think, the takeaway from that. We didn't know what product. We didn't-- For me, it was, it had to be in mobility, 'cause that was something that was... And it was just, s- I feel so lucky that Ather happened, uh, I think.

Speaker 42:25 So Swapnil, you, and Tarun, uh, were, uh, were at, were at the same time, right? So the, I think Ather started in 2013, '14 period.

Arun Vinayak 42:33 Yeah.... We all had jobs right out of college, and so we're all doing jobs, but secretly [chuckles] figuring out how do, how do you make this happen? Uh, we all got our placement jobs, right? And, uh, we just did it-- I, I think I did it to just to see, hey, what does a job look like, right? And we quickly, within, like, three months, realized, "Man, I wanna go back to building." Uh, Ather also had its journey, where it started off as a battery swap/battery energy company. At some point in time, obviously, it became very clear that the vehicle had to be built, and that was when I was like, "Bro, I have to be part of that. I wanna build a vehicle." Uh, and, uh, yeah, it was out of- [chuckles]

Speaker 43:05 With real parts. [chuckles] Not second-hand parts.

Arun Vinayak 43:08 With real parts this time, which was its own journey by [chuckles] itself.

Speaker 43:12 Fantastic. Uh, so, of course, you headed, uh, product at Ather till 2020?

Arun Vinayak 43:17 Yeah.

Speaker 43:17 Correct. And then you took the decision to leave and start Exponent. Um, I'm, I'm-- I mean, I'm not complaining, but I'm curious, why did you leave? Uh, what were the trigger points?

Arun Vinayak 43:31 Um, see, I, I, I think, uh, the larger ecosystem started moving, right? Uh, which is, I think when we started Ather, people didn't believe that EVs could be faster, could be better. By 2013, 2014, people thought EVs meant vehicles-

Speaker 43:49 We had those 20 kilometer per hour top vehicles.

Arun Vinayak 43:50 Exactly. There was just-

Speaker 43:51 Yeah

Arun Vinayak 43:52 ... cheap Chinese vehicles, uh, cars were slow. They were all ugly vehicles, right?

Speaker 43:56 Yeah.

Arun Vinayak 43:56 Uh, and they were not even considered real vehicles. And I think we were able to maybe pioneer the shift. And so the product philosophy at Ather was, "We will build the best scooter, period. It happens to be electric," right? And we achieved that. I think we were-- Maybe I-- we will, I will-- we will take, uh, I still say "we," but, uh, from Ather, but we, we will take credit, uh, that we pioneered this, the narrative that EVs are faster, better, sexier vehicles. We launched-- I think Ather is still considered one of the best products, EV products on Indian roads across categories. Um, it's beating bikes, it's beating cars in a lot of segments. Uh, so I think we did that phase one job of changing India's narrative.

Speaker 44:34 Mm-hmm.

Arun Vinayak 44:35 Uh, the government obviously got behind it for, uh, multiple reasons, like energy resilience.

Speaker 44:38 Yeah.

Arun Vinayak 44:39 Um, so I think fast-forward to 2020, a lot of people wanted to go electric, but there were no fundamental building blocks, right?

Speaker 44:47 Mm.

Arun Vinayak 44:47 So on a personal mission, Ather, we could build more two-wheel... Uh, from, from a personal mission, Ather, I could design more two-wheelers or we could fundamentally build the next set of building blocks, uh, to make all of India go electric ASAP.

Speaker 45:00 Mm.

Arun Vinayak 45:00 Right? Um, and it was very clear to me the fil- fundamental building blocks needed were the energy building blocks. 'Cause by 2020, OEMs were now in a position to buy a piece of one-- multiple piece of technology, more technology easily available.

Arun Vinayak 45:15 Of course, asset technology, people know.

Speaker 45:17 Yeah.

Arun Vinayak 45:17 So people were able to buy these pieces and do their thing, like large OEMs are able to do their thing.

Speaker 45:21 I get what you're saying. You're saying that in the general EV energy space, there are a lot of problems. Uh, a, uh-- if you are building a company which is building vehicles and you've come this far, you've sort of committed to building more and more vehicles. So if you want to tackle some other problem, you'll have to basically start from scratch.

Arun Vinayak 45:38 Yeah, because, because now you're building an energy company. Uh, and Ather, fundamentally, the journey at Ather was gonna be build more and more two-wheelers, and there was a fan-- there's a fantastic team already built up there. I think one of the job as founders is to make yourself obsolete. So there's a fantastic product team building great products, building on the platforms that we had already launched. By 2020, we had already launched Gen Two. Uh, so I, I felt like a large portion of my job was done. There's a lot, lot, lot of the focus there was on business scale-up and en- engineering, further engineering, supply chain, et cetera, which there were other people k- managing. So, so on a personal basis, was really excited about building this platform. And the first attempt was to say, "Hey, maybe we should build this within Ather", right? Uh, because the objective was not to leave Ather, the objective was to build a platform, right? Um, and we even went around speaking to other OEMs, and there was real interest, uh, for other OEMs to adopt a platform. But then there were concerns that, oh, Ather's also a vehicle manufacturer, so you're sort of a competitor.

Speaker 46:33 Yeah.

Arun Vinayak 46:33 Uh, then over time, the biggest realization that flipped my decision was, this is a commercial vehicle problem and not a two-wheeler or a passenger car problem.

Speaker 46:41 Correct.

Arun Vinayak 46:42 Right?

Speaker 46:42 Mm-hmm.

Arun Vinayak 46:42 And so now you're going from two-wheeler company to platform company, to platform for commercial vehicle. Now, you're so far away from Ather's scope. So then doing this within Ather would also be bad for Ather-

Speaker 46:52 Yeah

Arun Vinayak 46:52 ... would also be bad for this idea.

Speaker 46:53 Yeah.

Arun Vinayak 46:54 Uh, so then you need fundamental fresh eyes, fresh talent, fresh capital. So I think that's where we started.

Speaker 46:58 Fantastic.

Speaker 46:59 Can I just note that building in India, [chuckles] make in India-

Arun Vinayak 47:03 Yeah

Speaker 47:03 ... is hard the first time?

Arun Vinayak 47:04 Yeah.

Speaker 47:05 And you've chosen to do this twice.

Arun Vinayak 47:07 Yeah. Sometimes I, I ask myself why. [laughing] But those times are maybe 5% of the times. 95% of the time, we're happy. Uh, but, uh, yeah, I, I think, uh, building in India is hard, but if you've cracked it-

Speaker 47:23 Mm.

Arun Vinayak 47:23 Uh, and I think the, the time-

Speaker 47:27 Is it easier the second time?

Arun Vinayak 47:28 It is much easier the second time.

Speaker 47:30 Because you sort of have a sense of what will be the issues, what will be the-

Arun Vinayak 47:32 Yeah

Speaker 47:33 ... roadblocks.

Arun Vinayak 47:34 Like, we just launched our product within two and a half years, right?

Speaker 47:38 Yeah.

Arun Vinayak 47:38 With-- And there's no global benchmark for the product we built.

Speaker 47:41 Yeah.

Arun Vinayak 47:41 So I think that's actually the secret also. Once you learn how to build in India, that becomes your fundamental moat. So you obviously wanna go build the second time around.

Speaker 47:49 Yeah.

Arun Vinayak 47:49 Um, but this time around, because we're building a platform company, there are other realities in the business which are, which are much harder. Uh, building the tech, in some sense, is our strength. Um-

Speaker 47:59 Mm.

Arun Vinayak 48:00 Because now we're not just building a product that we can just go sell it to a B2C customer. We're fundamentally building a platform that enables OEMs in the commercial vehicle space, and these are very hard partners and very hard markets to crack.

Speaker 48:12 Yeah.

Arun Vinayak 48:12 Um, I tell-- I joke that Exponent is actually in this cusp of energy, automotive, [chuckles] and, and financing, which is very important for commercial vehicles. So we're in three big boy segments-

Speaker 48:25 Yeah

Arun Vinayak 48:25 ... uh, sort of coordinating in between. Uh-

Speaker 48:28 Yeah, but you're also like a linchpin because your technology makes everything move faster.

Arun Vinayak 48:32 Yes. So when it works, it-

Speaker 48:34 Yeah

Arun Vinayak 48:34 ... really works.

Speaker 48:35 I want to just reflect on something you said: building in India is hard. A lot of entrepreneurs say that if you build in India first, then you can easily-... export, you can easily build outside because this is a much harder space. Customers are more value-conscious. You have to really double down on your, uh, each rupee spent has to work harder-

Arun Vinayak 48:52 Yeah

Speaker 48:53 ... all of that. However, mm, logically, this sounds right, but when it hits the market, uh, do you feel like exporting a product business or a, a, or a, or a core engineering solution from India to outside, is there some mental roadblocks or there's some, like, marketing issues that come in? Like, I don't think- E- is it easy for you to consider a international market?

Arun Vinayak 49:22 Actually, before that, I want to make a point that even India, we have this mentality that buying tech in India- from India is bad.

Speaker 49:30 [chuckles]

Arun Vinayak 49:30 Right? So we've w- we've now signed up with some of the largest OEMs. Uh, and some, some of the hardest optics issue... And you- if you notice, historically, India, Indian OEMs have never bought technology from Indian companies.

Speaker 49:40 Yeah.

Arun Vinayak 49:41 Right? The Indian companies that supplied were only companies that supplied the plastic parts or the-

Speaker 49:45 Yeah

Arun Vinayak 49:45 ... the-

Speaker 49:45 Forged parts

Arun Vinayak 49:46 ... the forged parts or the cast parts. I would c- the, the build-to-print, the commo- sort of the commodity processes. The core proprietary technology always come- came from German, Japanese, American companies. So forget export, even in, in India, getting Indians to believe and the Indian government to believe, the Indian OEMs to believe that, "Hey, this technology will come from India." We should be building our tech for the g- world, which means we... Let's start adopting it ourselves. Just small things like charging standards. Like, Indian charging standards are still adopted from global standards, which make no sense in India, right? Uh, like a European passenger car standard does not make sense in India for commercial vehicles or two-wheelers. So that's why for Ather, the Ather standard is now an Indian standard, which is a great sign-

Speaker 50:26 Yeah

Arun Vinayak 50:26 ... of India building Indian tech, adopting Indian tech. So this is a real problem, even in India's mindset, that I think the self-belief as an ecosystem that we can build our own tech is very low.

Speaker 50:36 Mm.

Arun Vinayak 50:36 Um, so I think we have to start by fixing that locally.

Speaker 50:39 Arun, okay, uh, so I want to ask you a question here. Uh, just some, some things that we kind of skipped over. So in your, um, in your Raftaar days, you were the driver, is it?

Arun Vinayak 50:50 Yes. Uh, [chuckles] let's say that process wasn't very democratic, but I, I, I love driving. I was fairly fast, so we did a go-karting session, uh, and we picked

Arun Vinayak 51:00 the fastest times, so Anand and then me. Uh, Anand's also part of Exponent. Uh, and we were both the drivers.

Speaker 51:07 How fast do those vehicles go?

Arun Vinayak 51:10 Uh, so the acceleration of some of these vehicles, so zero to 100 times for these vehicles are the fastest in the world. So these vehicles have zero to 100 times faster than Formula 1 and faster than Teslas, uh, because there's no weight limit. Uh, uh, and there's no lower weight limit, so you can make these vehicles super light and, uh, they actually have the world record for the fastest acceleration.

Speaker 51:32 Nice. Um, of

Speaker 51:34 course, um, do you, do you go back to, um, uh, CFI often? Do you talk to the Raftaar team now?

Arun Vinayak 51:40 A lot, actually. I think, uh, maybe it's come down a little bit, maybe over the last couple of years, but I think we used to have them over here. Uh, we still have from f- the former student community active. Actually, most of our hiring is from the former student community.

Speaker 51:54 Mm.

Arun Vinayak 51:54 Um, so we still-

Speaker 51:56 I was just reading and I'm thinking that Raftaar is also now an EV car. They're competing in the EV competition.

Arun Vinayak 52:00 Yes. It- it's actually an EV, uh, competition, right?

Speaker 52:03 Damn, cool! Uh-

Arun Vinayak 52:04 I think Ather and Exponent are both sponsors/partners, and I think everyone's... Like, it's, it's, it's, imp- uh, it's great that they've done the shift as well.

Speaker 52:13 Damn cool. I'm, I'm thinking very, uh, very selfishly that for you, it's also a talent pipeline.

Arun Vinayak 52:19 Yeah. [laughing]

Speaker 52:22 [laughing]

Arun Vinayak 52:22 We're very openly selfish about this. [laughing]

Speaker 52:24 [chuckles] Mm. Great! So we learned a lot about your, uh, about your engineering life and how you think about work and business. Um, I, I was talking on Twitter for this, uh, prep, and I noticed that, um, you, you tweet about EV battery Make in India from the work side, but you also tweet a lot about Bangalore-

Arun Vinayak 52:45 Yeah

Speaker 52:45 ... and about cricket.

Arun Vinayak 52:47 Yeah.

Speaker 52:47 Um, so [chuckles] how happy are you that RCB won?-

Arun Vinayak 52:51 Oh, so much

Speaker 52:52 Finally. [chuckles]

Arun Vinayak 52:52 I'm, I'm a Bangalore boy, been here all my life. Uh, so apart from college. But yeah, just [chuckles] so great that they won. I always pretend like I'm too cool for the IPL. Uh, because I'm still like a sort of a test match purist, but, uh, but Bangalore is Bangalore and RCB is RCB, so. [chuckles]

Speaker 53:09 Yeah. You've been here, uh, from, uh, you were, uh, '91, right?

Arun Vinayak 53:13 Since I was born, yes.

Speaker 53:14 Since you were born. So, um, you've seen the city change?

Arun Vinayak 53:19 Yeah, so much. Yeah, so much.

Speaker 53:21 Um, do you feel like, um, it's changed too fast? It's changed for the better? I mean, pe- people have such different opinions. Some people are really, um... like, they, they, the old Bangaloreans, they're quite upset about how fast everything has moved and-

Arun Vinayak 53:36 Yeah. See, I, I think, I think that's a- that's not a great way to look at it. Uh, I think that in most cities, you always have people who cling on to the past. Um, and obviously, as a founder, as an optimist, future optimist-

Speaker 53:51 Mm-hmm

Arun Vinayak 53:52 ... uh, that's a terrible way to look at it. Uh, I think there are issues in the city. Uh, the growth is un- the rate at which we've grown has created a lot of issues.

Speaker 54:02 Mm.

Arun Vinayak 54:03 I-

Speaker 54:04 Sort of like fast-charged. City has been fast-charged.

Arun Vinayak 54:07 Yeah, but our fast charging ensures longer life, so [chuckles] it's a sustainable fast charging. But I think a lot of our planning and infra planning for Bangalore is not being great. So I feel very bad that the city struggles so deeply.

Speaker 54:17 Mm.

Arun Vinayak 54:18 Uh, but I also see so much- so many new things that have happened because of the inflow of all these smart people. Um, a lot of things have, have happened in Bangalore because of the growth. A lot of cool-

Speaker 54:29 Yeah

Arun Vinayak 54:29 ... ideas, a lot of cool startups, a lot of... I mean, everything from cool restaurants to everything that's happening in Bangalore is all-

Speaker 54:34 Yeah

Arun Vinayak 54:35 ... a second or a third or, or a degree of all this talent coming here and building cool stuff. Uh, so it's gonna have positives and negatives. Uh, but honestly, the negatives can be-... mitigate, we just have better planning, better governance, and I think that's always been a problem in Bangalore.

Speaker 54:48 Mm-hmm. But of course, I mean, your factory is, uh, firstly close to the Electronic City flyover, which is now what? I think 10, 20 years old.

Arun Vinayak 54:56 Yeah.

Speaker 54:57 And it's also next to the new Yellow Line metro, so-

Arun Vinayak 55:00 Which is always about to be launched. [chuckles] So maybe by the time this podcast comes, this ad will be launched. [chuckles]

Speaker 55:07 Yeah, it hasn't been launched yet, as of today, but we don't know, maybe tomorrow. Um, in your CFI days... Um, I mean, I feel like CFI students today could look up to people like Tarun, Swapnil, yourself, Kedar, and all these guys as major inspiration. When you were in CFI, who was your inspiration, or how was it like? Maybe you can share some stories around the CFI time, the things that you remember.

Arun Vinayak 55:37 Yeah. I, I think the difference was back then-- I mean, Tarun, I think, was always like, "I will do startup." I think that was his thing. But I think for me, it was never like, "I will do startup." Like, that was never even a priority.

Speaker 55:49 Mm.

Arun Vinayak 55:50 Uh, the priority was to build, and I think there was, uh, just finding people who vibed similarly. I think today, maybe that concept of, "Hey, I will start up," is, is a more natural thought process for students, which is amazing, which is important. I think it's great that tech, tech- technologists are also thinking startup more actively, starting from professors to students, to everyone. The whole ecosystem is great. Back then, it w- I don't think that was an objective. So, uh, like I said, I think, I think the turning point was go- going global and

Arun Vinayak 56:20 seeing all these other-

Speaker 56:21 Yeah

Arun Vinayak 56:22 ... guys building such cooler vehicles. I think that competition [chuckles] of building better vehicles just triggered us to-

Speaker 56:29 Maybe sometimes also what happens is, when you see someone else doing something which you thought, "Yeah, I can also do this. I mean, what do they have special that-

Arun Vinayak 56:36 Yeah

Speaker 56:36 ... they can-- they get to do this, and I don't?"

Arun Vinayak 56:38 Yeah, I think, I think the global exposure, uh, exposure just helped us, uh, just want to build better.

Speaker 56:46 Hmm. Well, um, I mean, uh, well, maybe we can go on the factory tour, but last question before we leave. Uh, what an exciting Test match series, right?

Arun Vinayak 56:57 Oh, yeah, totally. [laughs] Uh, I, I also, I also tweet on MotoGP sometimes, but, uh, I, I love racing. I love, uh... But I still think Test matches are, uh, more exciting than races. It's like this, uh, kind of like-

Speaker 57:11 Do you, do you think that startup life is like that? There are, like, these long periods of slog, and then these very exciting, short, five days, 15 days, 30 days.

Arun Vinayak 57:22 Uh, yeah. Like, I think Test match is like life, like startup life. Like, I think every session, you have win, loss, you have win, loss, but the game is never-

Speaker 57:31 Mm

Arun Vinayak 57:31 ... lost until the final day. Uh, so I think there's a lot of up and down. It's like, it's like... Uh, at least a Test match, when I say it's like, it's like this i- this immovable force or un- unstoppable force and immovable object. Like, it's just clashing and this-

Speaker 57:46 Yeah

Arun Vinayak 57:46 ... sort of like war, right? And I think, uh, startup is... It's not like these micro battles, it's like this longer war that you have to win. So I think you will lose a lot of micro sessions, but you have to-- So I think, I think it's very similar to that, that one.

Speaker 57:59 Yeah, I think so, too. I mean, very grateful that we actually won that match.

Arun Vinayak 58:04 Oh, yeah. [laughs]

Speaker 58:04 Otherwise, the story would have ended up very differently. [laughs]

Arun Vinayak 58:08 It's easy to say all these quotes after we won. [chuckles]

Speaker 58:09 Once we won, yeah. Okay, great. Uh,

Speaker 58:14 maybe you can show us some stuff-

Arun Vinayak 58:16 Sure

Speaker 58:16 ... some part of your, uh, factory.

Arun Vinayak 58:17 Super. Yeah, let's do it.

Speaker 58:19 Okay, so you're showing this.

Arun Vinayak 58:21 Yeah, so this is actually our, uh, Induct ePump. Uh, one of the realities in India is that people forget to put the connector back after, [chuckles] after they charge. Uh, so it's a global problem, it's also India problem. Also, we realize people pa-- unlike two-wheelers, people park wrong, right? They, they, they, they park-

Speaker 58:43 They park as they can.

Arun Vinayak 58:43 They park as much... with as much accuracy as you can, and different vehicles are different width, the connectors are in different location.

Speaker 58:48 The entryway is different.

Arun Vinayak 58:50 Entryway is different. Uh, and also because we do rapid charging, our cables are much bigger. They have to be. And we also have the fluid cables, like we said. So we decided to have this connector management system, which takes the weight off, uh, the driver, right? And now you can basically go anywhere you want, and so the system follows. You can go left, you can go-

Speaker 59:07 Nice

Arun Vinayak 59:07 ... right, and, uh, you can charge down or up. And basically, at the end of it, you just, [connector clicking] you connect it, you lock it, and then just let it go, and system sort of goes back. So we sort of... Of course, there's also connectivity, there's CCTV cameras, there's the whole SIM-- charge management system. So this whole thing is managed remotely by our central team. Uh, but some of this stuff that is India-specific, rapid charging-specific, we had to rethink the entire system.

Speaker 59:34 Very interesting. Yeah.

Arun Vinayak 59:42 Some of this lab is still under construction. We just moved in here more recently. So this is where we let the engineers break everything. Our whole philosophy, our innovation, is break, believe, build. Um, so you gotta keep breaking your own stuff. So, uh, so these are systems... Uh, we just switched off because of the noise during recording, but... So basically, each of these system is an oven, right? So you basically have these, [machine clicking] these chargers that... [machine clicking] Right. So, you know, each of these systems have these battery packs. This is a battery pack that goes into, say, a three-wheeler, and there's an oven that moves between minus five, uh, minus 20 sometimes, all the way to 45, 50, 60. So we keep changing the temperature of this oven, and these things are then connected to our cyclers there. So, you know, they're-- the system's actually charging and discharging these batteries. So these-

Speaker 1:00:38 So you're basically simulating the fact that it is... You're discharging the battery?

Arun Vinayak 1:00:43 Yeah, we're both charging and... So we're doing 15-minute charging. So today, we've actually tested our battery for 3,000-plus cycles. So when you buy a battery in the field, uh, you- it takes four hours to charge and get, gets you 1,000 to 1,500 cycles. We've actually done 3,000 to 4,000 cycles worth of testing for each, for some of our battery packs. Uh, and each-... cycle is a fifteen-minute charge cycle, right? So we really-- so this allows us to build, uh, a lot of durability and endurance testing at a rapid pace. Um, because on the road, maybe I can get two, three cycles a day. Here, we get almost ten, twelve cycles a day. So we do something called an accelerated life cycle test. So we take the road data, which you probably drive a vehicle in four, five hours. We discharge the vehicle in four, five hours, battery in four, five hours. So we take all that current data, uh, we sort of have a statistical way to compress that, and we feed that within an hour. So we sort of s- discharge the battery within an hour and create a lot more accelerated stress on the battery.

Speaker 1:01:34 So in a day, you can do it, like, twenty times?

Arun Vinayak 1:01:36 Oh, yeah. We, we now do ten to eleven times, uh, a day on average. Yeah.

Speaker 1:01:41 So three thousand tests a day.

Arun Vinayak 1:01:42 Uh, practically, with power going off and on, so ten to eleven times a day.

Speaker 1:01:46 Okay, nice. Yeah. Three thousand cycles for a battery for a commercial vehicle is like ten years of life.

Arun Vinayak 1:01:54 Yeah, depends on how you charge. But, but most commercial vehicles charge twice a day.

Speaker 1:01:58 Mm.

Arun Vinayak 1:01:58 Uh, so, uh, I see the-- its our warranty is three thousand cycles. Our life is anybody four thousand to five thousand cycles. So yeah, it's anybody seven to ten years of life based on how you use it.

Speaker 1:02:10 Nice. Um, as we are walking through your factory, I realize, and you spoke about it before the, before the event also, that, uh, the, the philosophy of this particular facility is that the headquarters, the design office, the engineering office, and the factory are all together.

Arun Vinayak 1:02:28 Yeah. Yeah, that's actually fairly unique. I think, uh, one of the... What generally happens is people end up setting up the design, um, in the, in the city.

Speaker 1:02:37 Mm.

Arun Vinayak 1:02:37 Uh, then you have a testing slightly outside the city, and the manufacturing, that's way far out, out of the city. Uh-

Speaker 1:02:43 Because that's how costs of land and-

Arun Vinayak 1:02:46 Exactly, right. Uh, one of the hard, I mean, hard things for us is, I mean, for example, that's our bus systems, right? Those are bus batteries, vehicles with our batteries that get charged. So these batteries are super huge. They're almost half a room size. Uh, so now to build all of this stuff, we couldn't do it in the city. Um, so we sort of had to find a place that allows designers to come actually play around. We need large shared areas. Um, so Electronic City was the closest to the city, which has the promise of metro, [laughing] and that we're able to sort of, uh-

Speaker 1:03:17 Make it work. [laughing]

Arun Vinayak 1:03:17 And one of the advantages of battery manufacturing is it's very high-value, concentrated manufacturing, so you don't need a large facility to manu-manufacture batteries.

Speaker 1:03:26 Yeah.

Arun Vinayak 1:03:26 Uh, so we're sort of investing a lot of automation. And so we bought the factory here, the test lab also here, and also the designers here. And it's always hard to [chuckles] send the designers to the factory. They never wanna go. So we sort of brought the factory to the designers, so now they're forced to [laughing] just look at what's happening in the line. And, and in hardware, you can't have designers disconnected from the manufacturing.

Speaker 1:03:47 And just as you're saying that, I'm seeing this, as you enter your facility, it says: "Break, believe, build," and it says, "Moonshots."

Arun Vinayak 1:03:54 Yeah.

Speaker 1:03:55 And I think all your conference rooms, all your rooms are named after-

Arun Vinayak 1:03:58 Some of the moonshots, yeah

Speaker 1:03:59 ... space things, right?

Arun Vinayak 1:04:00 Uh, generally moonshots, yeah. Uh, these are-- this is everything-- [tsking] So we only celebrate Apollo eleven, right? But, uh, these are all the Apollo missions that technically failed, uh, that built up to, uh, Apollo, uh, Eleven. So we're celebrating all the failures, which I think is a core tenet for us in innovation. We have to make mistakes quickly.

Speaker 1:04:22 Yeah.

Arun Vinayak 1:04:23 So that's the break, believe, build.

Speaker 1:04:26 Yeah. Okay, um, I, I guess you are leading us to-

Arun Vinayak 1:04:31 Yeah, we can go to the factory. Yeah.

Speaker 1:04:38 [footsteps] Two hundred people work here.

Arun Vinayak 1:04:46 Two hundred people work out of here, and, uh, it's our design, testing, and manufacturing team. Uh, so we've-- we sort of kept the factory at a low, uh, today, but, uh, that's our fundamental manufacturing line. So... [machine whirring] And these are all the cells that get manufactured and put into battery packs. These are actually our pretty cool automated six-axis laser welding machine. So it's got a six-axis robot, which actually welds each of the cells automatically. [machine thudding]

Speaker 1:05:49 This is the other machine you wanted to show us.

Arun Vinayak 1:05:51 Yeah, we call this the Stickinator Three Thousand.

Speaker 1:05:54 Stickinator Three Thousand, okay.

Arun Vinayak 1:05:56 Reference Phineas and Ferb. Uh, so actually, we don't bolt our, we don't bolt our battery packs. Uh, we actually stick our battery packs. So bolting, welding are all old school 'cause they all create a lot of noise, a lot of process variation.

Speaker 1:06:11 Mm.

Arun Vinayak 1:06:11 So if you look at Tesla, for example, they stick their chassis together because it is a zero heat process. It's a very high tolerance process.

Speaker 1:06:18 Right.

Arun Vinayak 1:06:18 Uh, so we actually have this special process where each of those modules that you saw previously getting laser welded now get sort of put onto these, uh, um, cold plates, and we sort of extract the heat from them, uh, from both sides, uh, very efficiently. [machine whirring]

Speaker 1:06:49 Stickinator, Phineas and Ferb.

Arun Vinayak 1:06:52 Yeah.

Speaker 1:06:53 When did they start? Must have been two thousand and five, ten.

Arun Vinayak 1:06:57 Phineas and Ferb?

Speaker 1:06:58 Yeah. I mean, you must have been already in college.

Arun Vinayak 1:07:01 No, I was in college in two thousand and nine. But also, I think the team named it, I didn't. [laughing] ... So we stick our battery packs together, uh, to prevent that, prevent piece to-- very low piece-to-piece variation. Also, we don't believe in bolting or torquing, 'cause then in the assembly line, everything is, has a variance.

Speaker 1:07:46 Mm.

Arun Vinayak 1:07:46 So here we are able to achieve, like, micron level flatness at a cold plate level, right? Uh, and we're able to, of course, achieve very consistent cooling. The thing with rapid charging is, it's a, it's a tolerance game. Uh, and this is one of the questions you asked, is: What's the difference between a cell to a car, two things?

Speaker 1:08:04 Yeah.

Arun Vinayak 1:08:04 A cell is all, cell, laptops, et cetera, have single, have single-cell applications. Automotive is a multi-cell application, so you have a tolerance problem now, right? So while you're rapid charging all the cells, you need to ensure that every cell is within the same tolerance band. Uh, you don't want one cell to sh-shooting off in temperature, so you have to extract heat very uniformly.

Speaker 1:08:25 Mm.

Arun Vinayak 1:08:25 And because the quantum of heat is also a lot more, uh, if you get your tolerances wrong, wrong, your standard, your, your deviations will... Your tolerance deltas will blow up, [lip smack] right? Because you're really pushing a lot of performance. So you need all your cells to be within a very, very s- narrow tolerance band, electrically, thermally. Uh, so that's a- l- last part of our business in manufacturing is tolerances. Well, I guess in any manufacturing, but especially [chuckles] so in battery manufacturing. Yeah, so that's... So once that gets stuck, we also put something on the top, and, uh, that's what our final battery pack looks like. Right. So this is a battery pack ready to ship. So these are all the boots, but this is where the final connections go to, right? And so this is where all the charger comes in, and these are all the fluid connections. So this is where the charger fluid comes in and enters, there and here, right? So-

Speaker 1:09:17 This is a battery pack for a three-wheeler.

Arun Vinayak 1:09:19 The battery pack for a three-wheeler, yeah.

Speaker 1:09:31 Okay, so there you have it. We were at the Exponent factory. We met the CEO. We spoke to him about making in India, building in India, and, uh, we- I hope you like it. And hit the like, share, subscribe buttons, and we'll see you next week. [upbeat music]