Decoding TrusTerra’s Bid To Cure EV Resale Anxiety With A ‘Trust’ Score For Vehicles

The other day, I couldn’t help but eavesdrop on a conversation between my father and brother about buying a new car. While there’s nothing wrong with our five-year-old Tiago, whose 1.2L 3-cylinder Revotron engine neighs 85 horses and produces 113 Nm of torque, it was probably time to expand the family fleet.

Yet, just as the excitement settled in, a string of questions left me with a sour taste.

Should we buy an ICE vehicle (petrol or diesel) or switch to an EV? What if we buy a petrol car, and the engine is not 20-30% ethanol compliant? And, if diesel, what’s the guarantee that tomorrow there won’t be a sudden mandate to blend 10% ethanol, or more, given the government is already pushing for 5%? Are today’s diesel engines even built to handle such abuse?

What do I have to do with ICE vehicles anyway? As someone who advocates clean energy, EVs are where my preference lies. The reason is not just better power but a smooth, guilt-free ride. Plus, the running and maintenance costs of an EV do not burn holes in pockets. 

“But, why wouldn’t they consider buying an EV?” I thought to myself. Clearly, I wasn’t torn between choices

Therefore, I preferred to park my thoughts, leaving the steering of our family’s future vehicle, whichever it may be, into the brave hands of my brother and father.

However, no matter how much I tried to stay away, one question lingered with me for a while, almost like a subconscious peeve. 

Even as India enters the EV 3.0 era, why are there doubts about buying an EV in a country aiming for a 30% EV market share by FY30? 

“At the heart of this paradox is often range anxiety and the real worth of the asset both for the seller and the buyer,” automobile expert Tanvir Singh said, on the sidelines of the launch of his new startup, TrusTerra, when I asked him about the conundrum most of us are stuck with.   

Launched just last week, TrusTerra is an AI-backed EV reselling platform. The cofounder of Mooving, a provider of battery swapping platforms, Singh, along with Saurabh Arora, Madhu Reddy, and Chanakya Agarwal, has launched the platform to solve the sector’s most pressing issue — the lack of trust, standardisation, and resale value in the pre-owned EV market.

He acknowledged that the EV buying sentiment is not just low among new car buyers due to range anxiety and charging infrastructure, but also in the second-hand market.

However, in the second-hand market, Singh believes, the absence of a trusted mechanism to determine the fair value of a vehicle is largely to blame. 

Not just buyers, financiers want to know if they are financing the right asset, and insurers need to be certain that they are covering the right vehicle.

Second-Hand EV Market’s Check Engine Light Is On

Little did I know about the inhibitions, barring range anxiety, that come packaged with an EV, Singh underlined that an average EV generally hits the resale market in about 2-3 years. This, he added, often emerges from concerns related to batteries.

“We see that approximately 20-30 Lakh EVs will come up for resale by next year or so. This number will, of course, keep growing with more vehicle sales.” As per Vahan data, India has sold around 50 Lakh EVs across categories in the last three years — a market ripe for the TrusTerra founders. 

Giving his insights into how the second-hand EV market is operating today, Singh said that while the number of people willing to sell their vehicles is also on the rise, the devil in this detail is that dealers today are unsure of how much price to quote when buying EVs from the first owner. 

“How would one determine the condition of a vehicle? Unlike ICE vehicles, where experienced technicians can determine the condition just by hearing the engine sound, EVs do not qualify for that. Based on what criteria, would buyers pay a certain price for a second-hand EV?” Singh said. 

Solving The EV Paradox

Just like how Mahindra has created an India Blue Book for ICE cars, TrusTerra is creating the same kind of benchmark in the EV ecosystem.

Basis its thresholds, it assigns a score to each EV to make it transparent for both buyers and sellers of the second-hand assets, as well as the dealers, financers, and insurers part of the reselling process.

Having started with the two- and three-wheeler segments, the startup plans to enter the electric car market by the end of the fiscal year.

The founders have developed three proprietary solutions — TruEV Score, TerraCash, and TerraBid.

The owner of an EV, who wants to resell the vehicle, can visit TrusTerra’s platform and ask for a TruEV Score. Based on the vehicle’s registration number, the platform assesses the vehicle’s condition and generates a score (on a scale of 0 to 60), along with a full vehicle report. 

The condition of the vehicle is determined based on aspects, including the battery and changing conditions, the condition of the drivetrain and other mechanical components, like the wear and tear of parts like chassis, brake pads, etc.

Besides, TrusTerra also sends its team to inspect vehicle quality on-site. 

Following an inspection, a TruEV Score is generated. The startup plans to charge INR 299 from users to generate this score, which is being touted to help buyers and sellers trade on a level playing field.

“We are positioning TruEV Score as the CIBIL score for the EV industry,” Singh said. Highlighting its use case, he said the score can also be used by dealers and financers to determine the cost of the asset and whether it is worth taking a risk or not.

Besides, its second offering, TerraCash, lets EV owners instantly assess their vehicle’s health and receive bids on TrusTerra platform. Lastly, TerraBid is a dealer auction platform to buy the sold EVs. 

Singh said that the platform has been built to filter out substandard EVs and funnel quality second-hand EVs into the second-hand market.

TrusTerra currently charges a 5-15% commission per EV bought from the dealers. The startup caters to customers in both B2C and B2B segments. The TerraCash app will be launched next week for both Android and iOS devices. 

How To Jumpstart EV Confidence?

At a time when there is a growing discontent in the EV ecosystem due to a range of issues plaguing the sector, including a lack of standardisation, absurd EV resale prices and limited financing options, the platform promises to solve a big trust gap in India’s pre-owned EV market.

“One of our key moats is that our tech is built on data from Indian conditions,” said Madhu Reddy, the cofounder and chief technology officer at TrusTerra.

The tech head explained that TruEV Score uses AI models, vehicle data, and proprietary algorithms across cells, battery designs, and other critical parts to make battery health and vehicle life-cycle transparent and reliable. 

The startup has trained and fine-tuned its AI and machine learning (ML) models on 20 Cr kilometres of data to build the accuracy of the score it gives to vehicles.

The startup says its data is detailed enough to factor in things like local road and power grid conditions, which ultimately affect the health of EVs.

TrusTerra is also in the process of filing two patents for its technology. Meanwhile, the startup is training TerraBid, an agentic AI solution that works seamlessly through WhatsApp.

In the last few months, India’s EV financing ecosystem has almost come to its knees, particularly following the BluSmart saga. The Log9 Materials trouble further damaged the books of many EV financiers.

While such instances are a common spectacle in any industry, TrusTerra claims to be working towards restoring trust in this space.

If done right, this can have a direct impact on people who still stand at arm’s length when it comes to EV adoption. But as far as the decision on our new car is concerned, I am happy to stay in the backseat, sipping my coffee as my folks engage in a fuel-vs-charging debate.

[Edited By Shishir Parasher]