Meet the Makers | Gegadyne Energy levels up the EV battery game
“By 2024, nearly half of new 3-wheelers sold will be e-autos: Crisil” - The Hindu
“HPCL sets up first electric vehicle charging station in Gujarat's Vadodara” - The Economic Times
“Chandigarh to get 70 charging stations for e-vehicles” - The Indian Express
An idea to make the world greener and a vision to change the way automobiles work is all it takes to bring about a revolution. With this mission, two students, Jubin Varghese and Ameya Gadiwan, decided to hold the beacon of light and vowed to break the norms. Thus emerged their unique concept of EV batteries, the ones that are greener, cleaner and more efficient.
In an age where fuel prices are escalating and a rapid rise in air pollution has been witnessed, it was vital to dial down the commercialization of conventional vehicles, which brought Electric Vehicles into the picture. But even though EVs turned up to be the talk of the town, they weren’t economically viable. Not only were they expensive in comparison to the conventional vehicles but also utilized batteries that were 40 per cent of the total EV’s cost.
The dropout techies: Jubin and Ameya
“Where there is will, there is a way”, goes the popular saying. Alas! The hurdles couldn’t stay put for long. Surpassing the common beliefs around EV batteries, Jubin and Ameya pledged to reform the core tech of EVs - the batteries. With their goal set and vision clear, they dropped out of college in 2015 to start Gegadyne Energy, the company that later earned the award of “Energy start-up of the year”, in 2019.
Being students of Mechatronic Engineering from NMIMS, Jubin was fairly intrigued by cars while Ameya’s interest lied in hard tech. Inspired by Tesla’s Model S and Model X cars, both of them decided to curate an electric vehicle for their final year project.
Searching the streets of Mumbai to look for the spare parts of the vehicle was when the realization of the cost of EV batteries struck them. Soon after, the duo dropped out of college to start their venture, which is how Gegadyne Energy took shape.
The technology that changed it all
The company kick-started with an experiment on lead-acid batteries. These were soon discarded because even though they were cheap, they took a lot of time to charge. Next, they tried to switch to lithium-ion batteries, the ones which are typically used in Electric Vehicles. They charged quickly but lost battery life in every charging cycle.
In an attempt to try something else, they found another material: supercapacitors. In addition to having quick-charging capabilities, supercapacitors had a longer battery life in comparison to lithium-ion batteries and were lighter in weight. It existed in the market already, but of course, with a few flaws.
Supercapacitors have a high rate of self-discharge and have low energy density (quantity of energy stored in said space). This was a problem, but it could be rectified. And so, the magicians, Jubin and Ameya enhanced the performance of the said supercapacitors by mixing composite materials, graphene and artificial atoms. Yes, they got into quantum physics!
With this, they were successfully able to bring down the rate of discharge of the batteries and increase its energy density. This is the technology that works behind the covers of Gegadyne Energy. This tech has enabled the makers to charge an electric vehicle from 0 to 100 in only 15 minutes. Not only did it make the batteries lighter, cheaper and greener, but also increased the battery life up to 50 times of the conventional lithium-ion batteries.
What’s next?
By the year 2016, EVs made 50 per cent of the total demand of Lithium batteries, worldwide. Even in the current scenario, Lithium is the major source of power for electric vehicles. But this Mumbai-based start-up is all set to stir the winds of change in motion. To be launched at a price at par with that of Li-ion batteries, the company is determined to steer the focus towards the Gegadyne batteries.
Aiming to overtake the market of Li-batteries, the start-up further unfurled that their batteries can also be used in telecom towers, other consumer devices and stationary energy storage systems.
In a country like India, that aims to run only on electric vehicles by the year 2030, this is a great start. Where a large part of the EV purchase depends on the battery, commercializing the above-mentioned technology can help India rise to the peak in the battery-manufacturing industry.
“Meet the Makers” is an initiative to give voice to the people who drive change, the ones who not only dream to fly but also know how to create wings. Jubin and Ameya are two young entrepreneurs who have set forth on the journey of making this world a greener and cleaner place to live in. Unstop (formerly Dare2Compete)is proud to acknowledge their efforts and hopes to illuminate the ideas of countless others who are often left unheard.