“The next motorcycle will be a smaller vehicle, that is what we're focussing on” says Dinesh Arjun, CEO, Raptee.HV

Raptee.HV CEO Dinesh Arjun pulls no punches in his passion for electric motorcycles. He reveals how Raptee is charging ahead with high-voltage bikes that rival 300cc petrol thrills, all while rewriting EV rules for India's roads.

On building a talent pool from scratch

Dinesh Arjun said “It's not about getting the best talent. It's because high voltage as an architecture is new, there's no real structure or regulation around it and nobody's really worked on it. So it's essentially something that we've had to take off of the ground. In fact, we're working closely with ARAI on developing the regulation itself. So the way that we've done it is largely to get fresh talent, who already does not have a bias. If I'm being honest, in 2022 when we actually went out and told suppliers and some of the people in the industry that we are building motorcycles on high voltage, everybody called us crazy. Today, Royal Enfield is building on high voltage and TVS is building on high voltage. So today, our tech is validated, but two years ago, people called us crazy, so unfortunately, talent was not available, so we got people, we got a couple of veterans from the industry to advise fresh talent who are in the company, and that's how we built the talent pool.”

On Raptee’s roadmap and potential scooters

“The reason Ratpee exists is to understand why electric motorcycles are not as mainstream as electric scooters. We believe there are enough and more players in the scooter space. So at least, I can say very confidently that at least for the next 5 years, we will not be looking at the scooter space. That's also because we believe there are amazing players, who have built out amazing tech for the scooter space, and we believe that there is more in the motorcycle space, and hence we started here. The focus is to bring out electric motorcycles for the masses, who are currently starting with the mid-size product, which will compete with the 250cc to 300cc vehicles. But Raptee.HV’s goal is to go into the larger market, which is the 150cc equivalent, once we have scale.This is scheduled in about 24 to 30 months from now, the product development is already in progress. Now we have a platform for the mid size segment, and we're building out different bikes on the mid size segment, on the 30 platform, which is the 30hp platform, we have a lot more different products coming, but on the next, 24 to 30 months horizon, we are looking at a more mass market product that will probably cost a little lesser and will compete against 150cc equivalent of ICE.”

On the next motorcycle

“The next motorcycle will be a smaller vehicle, that is what we're focussing on. It's taken us over six years to get to this state – we conceptually started in 2018, we incorporated in 2019, so since 2019 it has actually been almost seven years to kind of get here. Now we have a platform on which we can build a lot of different vehicles. We can even go one segment higher. The current platform allows us to get more powerful variants as well. But as a small and upcoming company, we also don't want to confuse the customer too much. We are currently focussing on scaling production, ensuring the quality of vehicles that are going out are also good. And then focus on more skills.”

On charging and infra

“One of the biggest reasons that we went into Combined Charging Station (CCS) is that we, as a motorcycle company, will not have to build out the charging infrastructure. So for example, two years ago, there was this huge talk about Low Energy CCS (LECCS), which was expected to be the standard for public charging in two wheelers. Even when that came, we said no. We're going to stick with CCS2, because the motorcycle two wheeler use case does not justify spending so much on public charging infrastructure. So what we did instead is follow the car, truck and bus industry, which is now mandated on CCS2, is anyway going to spend on creating that infrastructure and we will build on that existing infra. Today, there are already close to about 40,000 charging stations across India. We are partnering with charge point operators to ensure that the chargers across India are visible on our dashboard. We have a beautiful touch screen where each of these charges are visible and if our customers are driving across, they will know that these charges are there. We recently did an Asia record where somebody took our motorcycle across India about 8000km. He did not have any major issues in charging, so it's not only the south or it's not only the west, which has good charging infrastructure all over India”

On software updates

We asked Dinesh Arjun on how Over the Air(OTA) software updates help evolve the T30 motorcycle, he replied, “We are already working on improvements on something as fundamental as torque delivery and how that torque goes into the wheels itself. So even the customers who received their vehicle in February have already had a series of updates that makes the user interface a lot more smoother, and also improves on range based on the feedback that we're getting from the field. Like an increasing range based on how the riders are using the vehicle on the field and how we can kind of make that ride better and increase range overall. One of the other major updates that we're working on which will roll out in the next 6 months is torque control, how much torque they're able to put onto the vehicle without changing anything on hardware. It's just going to go as a software update. This will also drastically improve traction and traction control on the vehicle, which is again a very crucial safety mechanic. So given that our vehicle is a 100 per cent software defined motorcycle, we are actually able to leverage software to improve some of these features.

Dinesh Arjuna shared a candid chat, painting Raptee.HV’s vision for electric motorcycles that feel just as thrilling as petrol ones. With the T30 already matching 250-300cc bikes, they're bringing high-voltage excitement using fresh talent, since experts were hard to find back when everyone showed disbelief in their ideas. In the next 24-30 months, a cheaper 150cc model aims to hit the masses, powered by CCS2 charging across 40,000 stations, which you'll also spot right on the bike's screen. Raptee’s OTA updates keep improving torque, range, and even traction control on its recent T30 motorcycle.