A new week, another EV startup! Introducing the “most age-friendly and a rogue startup” says one of the three founders of the Ati Motors. The Ati Motors is into building an autonomous electric cargo vehicle, which is not a regular goods vehicle but made to run on hilly areas apart from campuses.
EV Startup of the week-“Age-friendly & rogue startup” in Bangalore
V. Vinay, Saurabh Chandra, and Saad Nasser are the co-founders of Bengaluru’s Ati Motors. It is making an all-new designed from the ground up, autonomous cargo vehicle inspired from the context in Bangalore but can also be used globally. The company has done pilot and beta in India but they will have most of the customers from outside.
EV Startup of the week-Ati Motors
The company started on 10th February 2017 and it is into manufacturing parts and accessories for motor vehicles and their engines brakes, gearboxes, axles, road wheels, suspension shock absorbers, radiators, silencers, exhaust pipes, steering wheels, steering columns and steering boxes and other parts and accessories.
Saurabh Chandra, co-founder of the company says, Saad and Vinay we know each other from a few years and mostly discuss interesting engineering problems for fun. There they started thinking to manufacture an EV.
“Interesting for us had to have the dimension of ‘not done before’. If it is done, it isn’t so interesting-right?”
“We also seek to challenge conventional wisdom on the startup founder’s age. Saad is 15, Vinay is 52 and I am a little more than the average. In terms of hiring, we should probably be the most age-friendly start-up. As long as you are excited about what we are doing and bring the sort of expertise that will make our current 3 PhDs in the team listen up. let’s talk. And we are not fussy about degrees either, Saad has skipped high school, I am an undergraduate and Vinay has a Ph.D. We cover the spread,” he added.
Electric cargo vehicle-Sherpa
The electric cargo vehicle, level-4 which is fully autonomous within private spaces such as factories. It carries a payload of 1 tonne in a semi-private location like a factory or an airport, etc.
This electric cargo prototype takes over the need of the human, as it is completely autonomous.
“We have seed funding to achieve our goals for the next two years. Between Vinay and me, we have a lot of starting up, fundraising, scaling and selling an experience.”
The company with 30 members has built a functional prototype. It has been tested in the campus of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, where the company collaborated for research.
Co-founder Vinay, a veteran innovator, says,
“I wanted to make one more technology play.”
Chandra, Co-founder adds,
“Philosophically, we wanted to do something ambitious and not just say, ‘Oh, this came out of India’. We wanted to make a global play. An autonomous cargo-carrying electric vehicle offered us the best of both worlds. Commercially, it is an attractive problem to solve, and we were going to make a full vehicle, and not just a software stack, or a set of programs.”
The co-founder, Nasser, a 16-year-old Standford certified whiz kid dropped out of school to become an entrepreneur named the electric vehicle as Sherpa, the name inspired him for the intelligent, load-carrying guides of the Himalayan mountaineering expeditions, he says.
“So there you go-not doing an X of India model, located in conventionally non-start-uppy Malleswaram, age-diverse, school dropout as I said, we are a rogue startup in Bangalore,” Chandra says.
Specifications of the Sherpa autonomous electric cargo
The Sherpa autonomous electric cargo can carry 150 kilograms, loads up to 500 kilograms. It consists of 3 wheels, two-wheels in front and one at back. It has 2 independent Brushless DC motors, the battery of 8 kWh, top speed depends on the operating and industries. It takes 2 hours to charge this cargo vehicle.
An interesting thing about this vehicle is that while it is carrying the load, its lidar can identify the obstacles coming in its way, with the help of the sensors such as lidar, camera, IMU navigation it automatically stops and doesn’t collide with the obstacles.
After the obstacle is removed it continues its work. It can be operated by anyone it is so simple to use it. It is like a uber for cargo!
(source: ForbesIndia)
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