Electrifying Fleets One Solution to World's Car Obesity Problem

tech.hindustantimes.com:

Companies in the transport sector, and automakers in particular, are among the most-visible pioneers of the inevitable shift to cleaner fuel. Electric cars are becoming a household concept, regardless of their prohibitive cost for most of humanity — another classic case where modern technology is largely unaffordable for the poor.

That’s where large fleet operators come in, according to New York-based RedBlue Capital, an early-stage investor in clean mobility startups. Companies like Amazon and food-delivery services such as DoorDash and Instacart will drive a faster adoption to EVs, RedBlue partners Olaf Sakkers and Prescott Watson say. Ride-hailing outfits, taxis, transit buses and corporate shuttles will also play a part, considering such operators are cautious about the total cost of ownership and use the vehicles a great deal more, making the economics of EVs attractive to them.

In 2019, RedBlue invested in Zoomo, an Australian e-bike startup that supplies to food-delivery services. Through bulk sales, Zoomo has already become one of the fastest-growing e-bike companies in the world, according to Watson. More recently, RedBlue invested $28 million in EVage, a supplier of light electric trucks in India.

“We should measure the success of the transition to EVs against how many miles they run, not by how many vehicles are sold to the general public,” Sakkers said in an interview in Singapore last week. “For many people, EVs are just a second or third car that they hardly drive, which doesn’t move the needle. But fleet operators use them many times every day.”

That’s particularly true for a country like India — a nation of 1.4 billion people or one-sixth of the world’s population. There, very cheap, no-frills cars made by