Panasonic forays into India’s EV charging space

Consumer electronics major Panasonic India has forayed into India’s e-mobility space with the launch of a ‘smart’ electric vehicle (EV) charging service. Termed as Nymbus, the service combines physical components such as charging stations, swap stations, on-board chargers and telematics systems, with virtual components like cloud service, analytics and artificial intelligence.

To start with, the company has rolled out its EV charging service on 150 electric three-wheelers and on 25 two-wheelers in the Delhi and national capital region (NCR), which it plans to extend to other vehicles in the near future.

Speaking on the occasion, Manish Sharma, president and CEO, Panasonic India said, “With the launch of the EV charging service, Panasonic for the first time is venturing into service domain in energy and eMobility. We are creating an integrated common platform to cater to unsatiated needs of multiple stakeholders and enable faster adoption of EVs in the country.”

Elaborating on expansion plans, Atul Arya, head-Energy Systems Division, Panasonic India shared, “Conceptualized and developed in-house, our charging service is currently meant for two- and three-wheelers, but we aim to expand that in the near future to other vehicles. We have currently deployed our solutions in Delhi NCR and aim to expand the offerings to Bangalore, Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai and Amaravati in the next three years and 25 more cities in the next five years (catering to) targeting approximately 1 million vehicles.”

Under the service, besides setting up charging stations and swap stations, Panasonic will equip EVs with telematics sensors that will collect real-time data, allowing users to generate reports from continuous operation and thus enabling them to use their fleet in an efficient way.

Built to learn and gain intelligence over time, the systems will assist the fleet managers in monitoring and managing the entire fleet such as finding out the efficiency of different li-ion battery packs and avoiding unnecessary charge trips due to lack of charging and real-time data.

The cloud and app service allows EV and fleet owners to easily search and navigate the nearest charging point, thus reducing logistical challenges.

The solution is poised to help individual EV users, EV fleet owners, e-commerce and logistics companies to manage their fleet more efficiently and also the utility providers, vehicle, equipment and battery manufacturers to understand the user patterns and calibrate the products and services accordingly.