Webinar category: e-Mobility

As the EV sector accelerates- from startups building next-gen drivetrains to legacy OEMs pivoting to electrification- investors are pouring capital into technologies that promise scale, sustainability, and disruption. Yet, beneath the surface of pitch decks and glossy prototypes lies a critical layer often overlooked: Technical Due Diligence (TDD)

TDD is not just a checkbox-it’s a strategic lens that evaluates the feasibility, scalability, and risks of EV technologies, systems, and infrastructure. Whether it’s battery chemistries, BMS algorithms, charging protocols, or thermal management systems, understanding the technical backbone is essential for:

• De-risking investments
• Validating product-market fit
• Ensuring regulatory and operational readiness
• Aligning engineering realities with business models

This webinar bought together voices from consulting, industry, and investment to decode how TDD can be a game-changer for capital deployment, strategic partnerships, and long-term value creation in the EV space.

Topics Covered in the Webinar:

• What constitutes robust Technical Due Diligence (TDD) in the EV domain
• Common red flags in EV technologies—battery safety, BMS logic, integration risks
• Tools & frameworks used in TDD (e.g., TRL, FMEA, system-level audits)
• How TDD influences investment decisions, deal structuring, and post-investment strategy
• Preparing for TDD: internal processes, documentation, and readiness
• Collaboration between startups, consultants, and investors during TDD
• Expectations from a TDD report—clarity, depth, and actionability
• How TDD varies across EV segments: OEMs, charging infra, battery tech, fleet platforms
• Impact of skipping TDD—valuation risks, scalability issues, and operational setbacks
• Strategic role of TDD in aligning engineering realities with business models

Key Insights:

• TDD is a strategic enabler for EV investments—not just a technical checklist. It helps investors identify scalable, compliant, and field-ready solutions while avoiding flashy but fragile prototypes.
• Product reliability and manufacturing resilience are top investor priorities. They look for validated engineering, robust supply chains, and readiness for scale—not just innovation on paper.
• Successful fundraising stories (e.g., Indian e-scooter OEM and Delhi-based commercial EV firm) were backed by strong TDD frameworks that built investor confidence and operational credibility.
• Common failure points in EV startups include poor benchmarking, unrealistic cost models, weak internal controls, and lack of regulatory compliance—many of which could be flagged early through TDD.
• TDD covers three pillars: Product (performance, specs, compliance), Process (design, testing, manufacturing), and Strategic Fit (IP, market alignment, investor goals).
• Engineering depth matters—from motor efficiency maps and BMS logic to torque control and end-of-line testing. TDD evaluates not just what’s built, but how it’s built and validated.
• Stakeholder trust is built through structured TDD: NDAs, controlled data sharing, and transparent evaluation protocols help both investors and target companies engage meaningfully.
• Policy and compliance risks—like subsidy misuse or non-localized components—can derail deals. TDD helps ensure alignment with FAME, CMVR, and ESG standards.
• TDD improves internal discipline for startups. It pushes teams to refine documentation, testing protocols, and vendor relationships—often accelerating product maturity.
• The broader impact of TDD is ecosystem-level: it fosters transparency, reduces deployment risks, improves cost efficiency, and strengthens India’s EV transition with trusted, scalable solutions

OUR SPEAKERS

1. Rani Srinivasan – Founder & CEO – Zero21- Renewable Energy Solutions
2. Stephan Lacock – Mechatronic Engineer, University of Stellenbosch
3. Vikrant Vaidya – Partner & Lead – EV Systems Engineering, pManifold
4. Yamini Keche – Energy Efficiency & Emerging Markets, pManifold

Retrofitting electric vehicles (EVs) presents a compelling opportunity to accelerate the transition towards sustainable transportation worldwide. Globally, as countries set ambitious targets for reducing carbon emissions, retrofitting offers a viable solution to upgrade existing internal combustion engine vehicles. It not only extends the lifespan of these vehicles but also significantly reduces their environmental impact. However, challenges persist, such as ensuring compatibility with diverse vehicle models, optimizing battery technology, and addressing regulatory standards.

Additionally, the cost-effectiveness of retrofitting compared to purchasing new EVs remains a critical consideration. In Africa, retrofitting holds immense promise, particularly in regions heavily reliant on older, polluting vehicles. The continent faces unique challenges, including limited access to charging infrastructure and a diverse vehicle fleet. Retrofitting offers an opportunity to bridge this gap by transforming conventional vehicles into cleaner, more efficient alternatives. By leveraging local expertise and resources, Africa can potentially lead in the adoption of retrofitting technologies, fostering economic growth and environmental sustainability. In India, with a burgeoning automotive market and a rapidly expanding EV sector, retrofitting assumes strategic importance. It provides a practical approach to make the existing fleet more eco-friendly, especially in a country with a substantial number of older vehicles.

Furthermore, retrofitting aligns with India’s emphasis on ‘Make in India’ initiatives, spurring innovation and employment opportunities in the EV ecosystem. However, ensuring safety standards, establishing reliable battery disposal mechanisms, and creating robust regulatory frameworks will be essential to unlock the full potential of EV retrofitting in the Indian context.

This webinar aims to discuss: 

• Business case for EV retrofitment to understand the associated advantages and opportunities (India & Africa).
• Technical Challenges and mitigation measures in EV retrofitment to ensure reliability and safety (India & Africa).
• Existing regulatory support to navigate the challenges and drive widespread adoption.

Our Experts:

Rahul Bagdia – Chairman and MD, pManifold
Barsha Paul – e-mobility and ZET Expert, pManifold
Yuvraj Sarda – Head, e-Mobility solutions, Volvo Group
Ashish Kulkarni– Mining Head, Dalmia Cements Limited
Raghavendra Mysore – Co-founder, MOOEV technologies

Challenges in the mining-

Availability of the mineral (Minerals present at greater depths)

Operational costs

Fuel prices rising up

Operational challenges

Underground emissions affecting health’s of the works and productivity

1. The electrification of the off-highway sector in India is still in its early stages. Over the past few years, the focus has primarily been on electric two-wheelers, three-wheelers, some electric commercial vehicles, and a handful of electric cars. With the introduction of the Pradhan Mantri e-bus seva, our attention has now shifted significantly toward electric buses. However, when it comes to off-highway machinery, trucks, and construction equipment, the inherent challenges have led to them being less considered candidates for electrification in the Indian context.
2. As we delve into the realm of solutions and assess their economic viability, we are beginning to recognize certain gaps.
3. Hydrogen as a fuel has higher energy density and can power bigger class machinery but has quite high volume, and has challenges in terms of storage and transportation. The solution can revolve around using hybrids (smaller battery + Fuel Cells/ biodiesel).
4. The economies of scale is very important in this context, considering the uniqueness of each mining site, equipment, and the technology tailored to specific companies.With the diverse and site-specific nature of mining operations, a customized approach to equipment and technology becomes crucial.
5. Within the same industry and even across various types of mines, each operation presents unique challenges and requirements. The demands of a coal mine, for instance, can vary significantly from those of a cement mine, with distinctions arising from factors such as depth, gradients, and geological conditions. It’s important to recognize that the mining environment, with its diverse landscapes and conditions, ranks among the most challenging in terms of vehicle technology and capabilities.
6. Mining electrification is a great segment to look at purely from the both from the first resistance and looking at the system as a whole.
7. Currently, for cost effective solutions companies prefer using biodiesels as well as heat XL diesel where the cost of diesel is near about 10-15 rupees, instead of electrification. But this practice is not sustainable in the longer run and a concrete solution needs to be found.

8. Critical charging infrastructure, such as sub-stations, becomes important in areas near mining operations to ensure a consistent and reliable power supply for the machinery.
9. Given the essential role that these machines play in mining operations, uninterrupted access to power is very important to always maintain productivity and efficiency across all points within the mining site.
10. Temperatures in mining sites can reach up to 60 degree Celsius, in such cases, different battery technologies can be explored based on their run time and thermal capacity for safety considerations.
11. Collaboration and discussion between OEMs and Mine operators is necessary for OEMs to understand what products to develop.
12. Although the industrial niche is ripe for revolution, the journey towards electrifying mining equipment is rife with complexities, demanding a symphony of collaboration among technology developers, mining giants, and regulatory bodies.
13. The journey towards electrification in the industry relies heavily on collaboration, knowledge sharing, and investments. It’s not solely the responsibility of the government; early adopters and industry stakeholders must also be deeply committed and invested in advancing this sector.
14. A combination of clean energy technologies would be required to fully address energy related challenges facing the mining industry.

Governments have been obliged to transition to green transportation as a result of ongoing concerns about global warming and rising CO2 emissions, which has fuelled demand for electric vehicles (EVs). Since e-Bus are more efficient and cost less to operate than traditional buses, countries all over the world are testing out e-Bus adoption through pilot programs. Some of these countries have already scaled up their e-Bus operations.

Many African countries, including Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, Morocco, Nigeria, Tunisia, Uganda, Zimbabwe, and others are evaluating the technical feasibility and planning for the deployment of the e-Bus. From among them, Ghana’s stakeholders have taken the initiative to share the intracity and intercity e-bus market feasibility study carried out by pManifold and UNEP-CCC in collaboration with University of Ghana, outlining the challenges and possible mitigation measures in planning, procurement, commissioning and operations of e-buses.

Thus, in an effort to support early success and learning related to e-bus adoption in other developing countries, this webinar will include discussions centered on the following:

1. Tendering, contracting, procurement, and financing: How to address country-specific needs in tenders & contracts and how to make e-Bus adoption more bankable by modifying certain clauses, structures, and timelines, etc?
2. Depot and route selection and operations: How to better understand depot and route selection to minimize cost and improve operational performance?
3. Charging infrastructure planning and electricity supply: As the ecosystem adds EV loads to the grid, how can distribution companies, operators, equipment suppliers, and government actors work together to develop charging standards and plans for charging infrastructure and electric grid upgrades?
4. Products and supply chain: How can the planning process emphasize long-term fleet conversions and demand creation that OEMs require to make large-scale investments in manufacturing capacity?
5. Capacity building: How can training programs and resources support officials with their transition to a new technology and business models?

Globally, countries are attempting e-Bus adoption through pilots and some of the countries have already achieved scale in e-Bus operations. Today, the cost of an e-bus is three to four times higher than their ICE counterpart. Additionally, the local supply chain for e-buses is also missing in most parts of the globe.

To achieve higher adoption and increase affordability of e-Buses, the aggregated procurement can be a good mechanism. The aggregation can be driven through city, state and national transport authorities to bring ease and scale-up the demand. The demand aggregation would help achieving:

1. Economy of scale through mass production/assembly and procurement of buses and lower the e-Bus purchase price
2. Standardization in technical specification of e-Buses, chargers and subsystems
3. Demand aggregation among multiple users such as private and public fleet operators
4. Opening market for global and local tenders to help override the local supply constraint

Over the fast years, India undertook and benefitted from a similar centralized aggregation mechanism. For instance, under the UJALA scheme demand aggregation of LED bulbs brought down the per unit cost from INR. 310 to INR. 50. Similar attempt was recently done by CESL under ‘Grand Challenge’ and has become successful till the tendering stage where CESL is able to find competitive e-Bus prices at much lower rates as compared to ICE counterparts. The price of e-Bus operations has come down from 60 INR/km to 43 INR/km.

Although this is a success so far, it may face challenges in procurement, financing, actual deployment and operations. Hence, it is important to understand from experts the success factors of centralized aggregation and procurement.

This webinar will focus on different aspects of centralized aggregation and procurement mechanisms and how this mechanism can be a good example for other countries. The webinar will include discussions around the following questions:

• Price discovery success case-study of e-Buses centralized procurement in India
• How cities’ needs are captured and translated into standardized technical specs for bulk/centralized bulk procurement to bring economic scale?
• What role of right financing and model contracting to mitigate risk for different stakeholders involved (OEM, City bus operator and others)?
• How to ensure quality deployment and performance through this mechanism?
• What are the learnings for other developing countries?

The electric vehicles (EV) market is growing rapidly all over the world. In India, the EV market has gained significant momentum at the present time. Approximately 2% of total 2-wheeler sales 2021-22 were electric. A whopping 46% of 3-wheeler sold were also electric. As of today, the number of e-2-wheeler and e-3-wheeler on-road are around 4.2 lakh and 7.1 lakh respectively. The FAME-II policy is encouraging start-ups and investors to build the EV ecosystem in India while competing with the cheaper imported options. Currently, there are 380 EV startups and auto OEMs operating in India.

The natural air-cooled batteries are most common among e-2-wheelers today. Most safety-related incidents have also been observed in electric two-wheelers over the past year or so. This has triggered many recalls by auto OEMs and the overall credibility of EV safety in India has suffered a dent making it a critical issue.

Thus, the following safety aspect for e-2-wheelers in particular, and EVs in general need to be incorporated in the interest of both – the users and the EV industry.

1)     Design of EVs (battery chemistry selection, sizing, cooling system, regeneration, controller calibration of safe operating thresholds, etc.)

2)     Operations of EVs (awareness of best practices for a safe operation like charging rate, cooling period, ambient temperature, etc.)

3)     Adequate EV regulatory framework (certification tests to capture real-world use cases and thus prevent on-road incidents)

It is important to deeply analyze all possible technical reasons and understand potential areas of improvement to avoid such incidents in near future. Thus, this webinar will focus on understanding;

•      Top fire hazard risks in EVs
•    Potential generic solutions to ensure the safety

The global market for truck-based freight transportis estimated to grow by greater than 4% from current 4.2 Trillion USD to 5.5 Trillion USD by 2030. It is expected there will be 4 million trucks by 2030. Trucks account for 18% world’s freight transportation and 40% CO₂ emissions of road transport. Due to almost complete dependency on fossil fuels, this sector provides huge opportunity of de-carbonisation through electrification.

e-Trucks are catching up in medium to large size fleets globally with both the OEMs and fleet operators driving the market. It is estimated that 15% of global truck sales by 2030 will be e-Trucks. The fast-growing e-commerce industry will add to the demand for long hauls as well as LCVs for intra-city distributions.

In long haul applications, the per day running of trucks is higher than current available range capabilities of e-Trucks. This will require en-route fast charging options to be set across their geographical coverage. Both the high range battery packs and fast charging infrastructure adds up to the capital requirement. Inspite of lower operating costs, there are concerns on supply availability and operational feasibility, which has limited its growth.

This Webinar will discuss scope of electrification of trucks, technical aspects, feasibility, manufacturer and user perspective and bring experts from multiple domains – e-Truck Manufacturer, Logistics Provider and Charging Specialist to discuss following:

1. What is role of e-Trucks in decarbonization of freight transportation?
2. What are e-Truck segmentations based on applications like long haul vs. intracity, and other use cases?
3. What are the techno-commercial considerations (kerb mass, payload, range, speed, gradeability, charging, TCO etc.) for viability of e-Trucks in different applications?
4. What different charging infrastructure requirements and techno-commercial considerations for different e-Truck applications?