Sheru is first in the world to integrate V2G technology with battery swapping. How will these integration revolutionise EVs, improve its range and its overall performance?

Battery swapping as a technology reduces the cost of an EV and brings it on par with vehicles running on petrol or diesel as owners of EVs do not need to buy the battery. This helps in increasing the uptake of the technology quickly as the cost of the vehicle is drastically reduced. It also reduces the range anxiety of users as they do not have to worry about finding a charging location or wait for a few hours to charge the vehicle and can swap the battery instantly.

Combining this with V2G technology is revolutionary as it allows the battery to be utilised for several other functions. It enables the creation of an aggregated energy network which can be used by the energy industry for storing variable renewable energy. This allows the battery technology to remove two fossil fuels from use at the same time - coal from electricity and oil from mobility. It thus helps two industries reduce their carbon footprint at the same time. And this is also advantageous for EV owners as it reduces the payback period of EVs by giving them an additional revenue stream.

Elaborate on the role of battery software. Given batteries are essential for both energy and mobility, how important is the software's role in battery performance?

Software is critical to battery performance as it provides insights into the functioning of the battery and helps avoid issues, while increasing the life of the asset. For both mobility and energy industries, this is of immense value and Sheru's solutions are helping users in both areas. It helps scaling up manufacturing by getting data for creating better batteries and in tracking the asset better.

What is your approach to improving the energy density of your batteries?

Batteries used in swapping applications need not have the same energy density as that of a fixed-battery EV as they are swapped when out of charge. This allows us to focus on optimising the life of the battery.

Elaborate on the unique concept of cloud storage of energy. How is this innovation proving beneficial to India in a bid to achieve decarbonisation, meet energy storage concerns and climate change targets, etc.

India needs to meet a renewable power installation target of 500 GW by 2030. To achieve this, there needs to be a substantial amount of energy storage to support it. However, energy storage is both expensive and has long payback periods. With cloud storage of energy, utilities do not have to install their own storage facilities and instead access storage on a pay-per-use basis, thus making it a much cheaper way to store energy. This helps in meeting our decarbonisation goals and climate change targets.