Low battery: The biggest challenge hindering all-electric cab company BluSmart
Mint. Fresh from a trip to London and dressed in his usual crisp white BluSmart shirt and blue turban, Jaggi has other concerns now. While he maintains demand for rides is strong and growing, scaling up would require more charging points.
This is a major pain point that is also impacting demand for electric vehicles in general. In the case of BluSmart, which prides itself for being a full-stack EV ridehailing firm (unlike Ola or Uber, which dabble in everything), it means the company will have to do the capital-intensive heavy lifting to set up a bunch of charging stations. “As our fleet expands, we have to increase the number of chargers.
We have to go with the flow of the city. There are two peak periods, morning and evening, where we want all cars to be charged. To do that we have to keep adding chargers," said Jaggi.
“The charging point comes first and then the car. Getting the car is no longer a big problem, nor is financing. Charging is where we need to speed things up." Currently BluSmart has 50 charging hubs to support its 7,600 cabs.
But given that the company plans to have around 30,000 cabs by 2026, it would need to quadruple the number of charging hubs and stations. That, however, is an added burden and one that the company did not foresee when it started out in 2019. Unlike its rivals, who follow an asset-light aggregator model (cars are owned by the drivers and the companies charge them a commission for providing customers), BluSmart owns all the cars in its fleet and employs drivers on monthly salaries.
The cost of the vehicle remains either on the books of the company or with third-party lessors. The cost of charging infrastructure is a separate cost, adding to BluSmart’s capital expenditure. The
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