Electric vehicles are the future, there is no doubt about it. But do they belong in
your present? The company trying to make sure that you have a EV in your present now is the Bounce
Infinity E1, the first scooter in India to have swapping as a part of the ecosystem. But does it
change things fundamentally for you and should you be thinking about buying one? We'll find out in
this video. Caveat, this is still a pre-production scooter, stuff like the side stand still has to be
finalised, the software is not final, so we'll get a sense of what this scooter is, but the actual
road test of the final product will only come in about two months from now, so it's critical
that you hit the subscribe button and the bell notification icon so you don't miss that video
and if you like the video, give us a thumbs up and do share this with your friends and now let's
bounce. The biggest difference between Bounce as an EV two-wheelers startup and everyone else
is that they've been at it for a while. They converted many of their rental scooter fleet,
TVS scooty Zest mostly into EVs running an earlier version of this powertrain quite a while ago,
which means huge numbers of miles clocked, lots of batteries swapped, they have a lot of experience.
What they've built now is a mass market scooter, the motor makes 1.5kW peaking at 2.2kW,
the lithium-ion battery is 2kWh and top speed is just 65. Not exciting numbers,
but this unlike say the Ola or the Ather is a mass market scooter. So the expectation is,
it's an urban runabout, it's not a performance scooter, although obviously electric motors and
the instant torque does give it a little bit of an advantage there. But the label here says power and
eco, I would call it moderate and mild because acceleration in power mode is moderate at best
and in eco mode, it's mild and that's not honestly on its own a problem.
The problem really with this scooter and to me at the moment, it's a deal breaker even given
the fact that this is a pre-production model is that the throttle calibration just does not work.
To Bounce's credit, they do have a month more and software is all that this is and it's very easy to
sort out, but they really should have done it by now because when the scooter does do predictable
things, it's a small part of the experience right now, it should be the entire experience, when it
does those things, it's quiet, it's refined, the torque feels nice and steady speeds like
40-50 actually feel pretty pleasant to do. What Bounce promises is the convenience of swapping
batteries as well as the option to not pay for the battery at the beginning, substantially reducing
your buying cost. Now that the Union Budget seeks to include battery swaps in the undersubscribed
electric subsidy plans, the Bounce idea is even more relevant. So how does it work for you? So
the whole point of buying a Bounce with a swappable battery is that when you run out of
charge like I have right now, all you have to do is use the app which I don't have today with me,
to find out where I can find a charged battery and that's brought us to this location here.
So here's how the process works, watch this. So you unlock the seat, you undo your battery,
which is the depleted battery, the one that we're trying to swap, you take the connector out.
Now this is a 13 kilo battery, so this is the heavy part, but Bounce is saying that
some of these places that you will go to will have people to help you with this, but the 24/7
places obviously you'll have to do this yourself. Now the app has already told me that this is the
slot where my battery goes and this is the slot from where I will get a fully charged battery.
So open the slot, there's a lock on the connector, I take that off, I take this battery out. Now I
would love to be able to do this one hand at a time but you can't, it's just too heavy for it,
slotting the battery in is a little bit of a challenge, so I'm going to have to use two hands,
I slot this battery in, I take the connector, once it's connected, I close it and it's done, now the
system knows that the depleted battery is now back on the system, it's set for charging for whoever
the next person needs it and now all I have to do is put the charged battery back in the scooter.
Once that is done, I connect my connector and now when I turn the scooter on,
full charge, we can ride 50 or 60 kilometres depending on the range you use, we are good to go
again. This is roughly the amount of time you take to fill petrol in ICE, that's the convenience of
swapping that is being promised here. The idea is solid and not just for Bounce. Being able to swap
batteries easily means you don't have to wait for the usual five to seven hour charge time and 0 to
80% in 15 minutes etc., is not going to be part of your world. Bounce is tying up with all kinds of
shops, malls, establishments etc., to offer charge pods like this one with multiple configurations
available, but as is with most things, you will pay for the convenience even if you can avoid
paying to own the battery itself on your Bounce if you like. Now I have to admit that in school
I wasn't the strongest mathematics student and buying the Bounce today has a lot of mathematics
involved because there's the cost you'll pay to swap the battery, there's the cost you'll pay for
subscription every month, and the cost that you'll pay upfront to get one of these things home.
But luckily for me, Jehan Darukhanawala from ZigWheels, he is good at mathematics and he says
you can get one of these home in Maharashtra for a minimum of about Rs. 46,000, at that point you
will be paying Rs. 1250 a month in subscription charges, you will pay Rs. 35 every time you swap
a battery. The most expensive version of this is about Rs. 70,000 at which point the subscription
and all of these charges go away and his math says, that if you were to buy the scooter
at the bottom price, if you were to pay the subscription and swap batteries 10 times a month,
in the year, in the first 12 months that you live with this scooter, you will have ended up saving
only Rs. 5000 and about 14-15 months in, the Rs. 46,000 scooter will actually be more expensive
than the 70,000-rupee version of the Bounce, so now you know who to go to for mathematics
at least, if not whether to bring the Bounce home or not, so let's talk about that. I can tell you
from our experience today that this is a pretty pleasant scooter, performance is moderate and it's
supposed to be, it doesn't feel out of place. When the throttle works, it's a nice smooth, refined
experience. Tall riders, the grip will mess with your knees when you're in tight turns and the
handlebars turned all the way. But that aside, there are no real big flaws here. Assuming that
the app works, the swapping works and of course that the scooter proves reliable, but as of today,
this problem is so severe that I have to say, today is not the day for me to tell
you to get the one of these home, we are going to have to wait a month, month and
a half for the final scooter to come with the final software, with the app, with actual swap
stations so that I can actually tell you what the experience will be like. So today, unfortunately,
like a lot of EVs that we've tested before in this kind of prototype stage, that is a pause for me,
and I'm hoping that in about a month and a half, we'll be able to press play and until then,
this is PowerDrift, four buttons for you, thumbs up if you liked the video, show it to your friends
because this is important, subscribe and bell notification icon so that when we ride the final
scooter, you will get the real version of the picture, until then, I'm going to bounce.