How Clean Electric Wants To Dominate The Indian EV Paradigm With Its 12-Minute Battery Charging Tech

India has made significant progress in adopting electric vehicles (EVs) over the past few years, but charging infrastructure remains a major challenge. 

Notably, this issue is not unique to India. Globally, too, the lack of robust EV charging infrastructure and the significant time required for charging are preventing consumers from switching from internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles to EVs.

Even Deloitte acknowledges this concern in its recent global survey, which recognises charging time, range anxiety, cost, and battery safety as consumers’ primary concerns with battery electric vehicles.

In India, 43% of the 864 people surveyed expressed concerns about the time required to charge EVs, while 42% were worried about the lack of public EV charging infrastructure.

Now, much is being done by Indians in this area, which has largely proven to be the Achilles heel of this ever-evolving sector. A case in point is Exponent Energy, which has already made headway into the fast-charging domain. With its 15-minute fast charging technology, the company caters to commercial EVs at its dedicated charging stations. 

Similarly, Bengaluru-based EMO Energy has also developed EV battery packs that can be charged in under 30 minutes. 

Meanwhile, Pune-based Clean Electric has gone further. Using nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) and lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cells, the startup is developing 12-minute charging technology for two- and three-wheeler EVs. As per the startup, the icing on the cake is that its batteries are designed to deliver consistent performance across all public charging stations.

Clean Electric: The Inception Saga

Clean Electric was founded in 2020 by former IITBHU students Akash Gupta, Abhinav Roy and Ankit Joshi to address the safety, cost, and convenience issues associated with EV batteries.

“We believe that for EVs to become mainstream and for us to succeed in this space, we need to address cost and convenience. Currently, it takes five minutes to refuel a combustion engine vehicle, while EVs take 60-100 minutes to charge. Our goal was to find a way to charge these batteries in under 10-15 minutes. That’s how it all started in 2020,” cofounder and CEO Gupta said.

The cofounders then started developing a new architecture called direct contact liquid cooling, which is a type of immersion liquid cooling technology. As per Gupta, no one has been able to scale this technology globally so far.

Notably, one of the biggest challenges in EV development pertains to battery management. 

Keeping batteries cool enough to maintain peak performance throughout the lifespan of vehicles is crucial, as overheating could lead to quick degradation of batteries. Besides, fire-related incidents in EVs are common due to poor cell quality or faulty battery management systems (BMS) due to the innately sensitive nature of lithium-ion batteries.

Globally, various cooling systems such as liquid cooling, air cooling, and phase change material cooling are used to keep EV batteries at their optimal temperature. Immersion cooling is a system where the battery cells are directly immersed in a dielectric fluid. However, this has several drawbacks, making this technology difficult to scale.

Despite this Clean Electric claims that its proprietary technology provides high cycle life and performance. Its batteries come with around 3,000 cycle life. The startup claims to have achieved this level of efficiency through intense R&D processes over the last four years. 

For batteries to charge rapidly (say 10 to 15 minutes), a superior cooling architecture is required, which Clean Electric has been able to achieve in sync with its proprietary intelligent battery management system. Gupta said that the startup has been granted four patents in India and the US.

In 2022, Clean Electric raised around $2.2 Mn in a seed funding round led by Kalaari Capital. Its cap table includes institutional investors such as IIM Ahmedabad, Climate Angels, and LetsVenture.

Clean Electric’s Value Proposition

Currently, the startup closely rivals Exponent Energy, but unlike Exponent, whose entire tech stack is around 15-minute chargeable batteries, Clean Electric’s batteries are designed to be compatible with universal charging points.

“You can use any charging station set up by ChargeZone, Tata Power, Shell, HPCL, or IOCL and still charge our EV batteries in 12 minutes. We utilise the vehicle’s own cooling system for charging. Therefore, our batteries can be adopted globally and are not restricted by proprietary charging stations,” Gupta said.

The cofounder added that the startup aims to create a global solution, similar to how smartphones have standardised chargers. 

The EV startup has already built batteries for two, three and four-wheelers. Also, given the cooling system of electric two-wheelers and electric rickshaws are different from the refrigerated cooling system in electric cars and L5 vehicles, the battery warranty for the former ranges between 1,000 to 2,000 cycles.

Clean Electric batteries are already powering EVs manufactured by Bounce Infinity in almost 38 cities. Apart from this, the company is in discussions with multiple other EV OEMs and conducting pilots with international carmakers.

Clean Electric’s Road Ahead

Having started selling its batteries last year, Clean Electric is still operating on a smaller scale. Currently, its batteries are slightly more expensive than others in the market, but the cofounder believes that it could be resolved with scale.

Currently, the startup reports monthly revenue of around INR 1 Cr. It aims to increase this to INR 10 Cr per month by the middle of next year.

The startup is also planning to scale its existing technology to provide battery solutions to electric bus operators. Gupta highlighted that their batteries are undergoing extensive R&D to cater to buses and trucks.

The startup is in advanced discussions with existing and new investors to raise funds in a fresh round soon, though the amount has not yet been disclosed.

In a market that is projected to reach about $114 Bn in size by 2029, Clean Electric, with its current value proposition, is looking at a significant market opportunity if it can scale its tech. With the backing of some marquee investors and an aim to provide fast-charging solutions to every vehicle category, it would be interesting to map the startup’s growth trajectory from this point.